Andrew paid an estimated £12 million to settle with Virginia Giuffre (Picture: PA)
Prince Andrew made a ‘terrible mistake’ by settling his sexual assault case with Virginia Giuffre, a former lawyer for Jeffrey Epstein has claimed.
Alan Dershowitz, who was part of Epstein’s defence team when he was first prosecuted for child sex offences, said the Duke of York ‘would have won’ if he had fought the case in court.
Andrew paid an estimated £12 million to settle the suit privately after Ms Giuffre claimed she had been trafficked to have sex with him three times when she was 17 years old.
He has strenuously denied the allegations or having even met Ms Giuffre.
Alan Dershowitz suspects the late Queen ‘pressured’ Andrew to settle (Picture: Reuters)
Mr Dershowitz was also accused of sexual abuse by Ms Giuffre but she went on to drop all claims against him and admitted she ‘may have made a mistake’ by identifying the lawyer, who long denied the allegations.
He told Times Radio of his suspicion that the late Queen Elizabeth II ‘pressured’ her younger son into the decision.
Mr Dershowitz said: ‘I think he made a terrible mistake. I suspect he was pressured by his mother to make that mistake.
Dershowitz was part of Epstein’s defense team in the 2000s (Picture: AP)
‘If he had fought that case, I believe he would have won, I believe the case would have been dismissed on a variety of grounds, but he didn’t want to sit through a deposition, or people around him didn’t want to sit through a deposition, so he settled the case.
‘Often you settle cases, not because you’re guilty of what you’re charged, but because you don’t want to admit other things that you’ve done.
‘I feel sorry for Prince Andrew for this reason, assuming everything they say about him is correct, the woman who accused him was over the age of consent.
‘She apparently bragged about it to her friends, and she collected millions and millions of dollars for that, yeah, I feel sorry for him.’
Ms Giuffre also accused Dershowitz of sex abuse before dropping her claims (Picture: PA)
The allegations have been freshly aired over the past week by the unsealing of batches of court documents related to a court case settled in 2017.
More claims against Andrew have surfaced as a result, including that he took part in an orgy with underage girls on Epstein’s private Caribbean island.
The documents also refer to claims he put his hand on the breast of a woman for a photo in 2001. Andrew has previously denied any wrongdoing.
King Charles III has reportedly doubled down on his efforts to freeze Andrew out of the royal family’s public face.
The court case which produced the newly unsealed documents saw Ms Giuffre sue Ghislaine Maxwell, a friend of Andrew and Epstein who trafficked girls for the late billionaire, for defamation.
Epstein died in 2019 while in prison awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
Ghislaine Maxwell, 62, is in a US jail serving a 20-year sentence imposed in 2021.
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Alan Dershowitz said the Duke of York ‘would have won’ his case against Virginia Giuffre but was ‘pressured’ by the late Queen to settle.