Prince Andrew’s trial may be moving forward as District Judge Lewis Kaplan, who has been overseeing the case, has ruled that depositions must be filed before 14 July 2022. This means that the royal will be obligated to answer questions about the lawsuit privately, while still being under oath. The questions will be asked by Virginia Giuffre’s lawyers, and his statement can be used in court.
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Upcoming deadlines
Prince Andrew will be allowed to have legal representatives during the process and he can choose not to respond to any questions that could be self-incriminating. For the depositions, Giuffre will also be asked to answer questions under oath.
According to Sky News, both the parties have agreed to the deadline, and the judge has called for the submission of the pretrial order on 28 July. In the pretrial order, the defendants and prosecutors will have to lay out their case before the start of the trial to see if they can reach an amicable settlement without taking the matter to court.
Sex abuse lawsuit
Prince Andrew has been accused of sexual assault on three different accounts by Virginia Giuffre. One of which took place in London at the home of Ghislaine Maxwell, ex-girlfriend of sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein, when she was 17 years old. The other two assaults happened in Epstein’s mansion in Manhattan and on his private island in the US Virgin Islands.
The Duke of York and his legal team have been aggressively trying tonullify the sex abuse lawsuitsince they were first filed in August. If they fail to do so, these deadlines in 2022 may very well put a huge damper on the Queen’s much awaited Platinum Jubilee celebrations which is expected to take place in June.
