Prince Andrew will give evidence under oath in London on 10 March as part of a US civil sex assault case against the Duke of York, The Telegraph has reported.
Virginia Giuffre, 38, claims she was trafficked by the now-late convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein to have sex with Prince Andrew on three occasions when she was still a minor according to US law. Last August, she filed a civil lawsuit against the royal, who denies any wrongdoing.
The Telegraph cited an unnamed source close to the royal as saying that they had "agreed to voluntarily produce the Duke for a deposition on 10 March" and that "despite repeated requests, Ms Giuffre (Roberts) still hasn't committed to a date or location for her deposition".
According to the newspaper, the royal's deposition, which is expected to last two days, will be conducted by Giuffre's lawyers, David Boies and Sigrid McCawley.
In this Aug. 27, 2019, photo, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, center, who says she was trafficked by sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, holds a news conference outside a Manhattan court where sexual assault claimants invited by a judge addressed a hearing following Epstein's jailhouse death in New York
© AP Photo / Bebeto Matthews
Separate unnamed sources were quoted by The Times as saying that Prince Andrew's defence team is seeking sworn testimony from Carolyn Andriano, a victim of Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, who may claim that Virginia Roberts recruited her at 14 and trained her to give sexual massages. Maxwell, the former girlfriend and "pimp" of the embattled financier, was convicted in December 2021 of trafficking underage girls for Epstein. She faces sentencing on 28 June, with the prospect of spending up to 60 years in a US jail.
"It's potentially a double-edged sword", the sources told The Times referring to Prince Andrew's "unclean hands" defence strategy, in which the Duke's lawyers will argue that Roberts does not deserve damages because she was complicit in a "criminal enterprise".
The 35-year-old Andriano previously corroborated claims that Roberts had sex with the royal at Maxwell's London home when she was 17, which apparently means that she could do so once again under oath.
In an exclusive interview with the Daily Mail, she claimed that she doesn't think "Virginia deserves anything less than what Maxwell is getting because she trafficked me into a world of spiralling downward slopes and it has taken my husband, John, 12 long years to get me to love myself again".
The sources' Sunday claims come a few days after US Judge Lewis Kaplan issued a formal request for testimony from Prince Andrew's former assistant Robert Olney, who is due to testify about the Duke of York's communications with Epstein, Maxwell, and Giuffre, as well as the royal's trips to Epstein's properties.
Separately, Kaplan sent a letter to the British High Court, requesting testimony from Shukri Walker, who claims she saw the Duke of York at the Tramp nightclub in London in the early 2000s. The US judge additionally requested the Australian attorney general's assistance to obtain testimony from Giuffre's husband Robert and her therapist Dr Judith Lightfoot.
Their testimony may uncover details about her purported childhood trauma and abuse, as well as her relationship with Epstein and Maxwell and her possible role in trafficking and recruiting young girls for the now-late convicted paedophile. Kaplan requested that the testimony of all four witnesses be completed by 29 April.