A federal judge overseeing Virginia Giuffre’s sexual abuse lawsuit against Prince Andrew has asked British and Australian authorities to help both sides obtain testimony from witnesses outside the U.S., according to court papers filed Monday.
Earlier this month, the Duke of York and Giuffre’s legal teams requested that U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan make the petition to the relevant foreign officials.
Giuffre alleges in a civil suit filed in August in Manhattan federal court that she was sexually abused by the Duke on three occasions when she was under 18 at the behest of late financier Jeffrey Epstein and disgraced British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell.
Her team wants to depose Robert Ashton Olney, the prince’s former royal assistant known as an equerry. The attorneys say his name and number appear in Epstein’s phone book under “Duke of York,” and the ex-aide would know details of the royal’s travels and appointments in the early 2000s when Guiffre alleges the abuse occurred.
Another witness that Giuffre’s team wants to question in England is Shukri Walker. She has stated publicly that she saw Prince Andrew with a woman who may have been Giuffre at Tramp nightclub in London.
Giuffre has alleged that she went to the club with Prince Andrew in 2001 then was forced to have sex with him at Maxwell’s apartment later that night.
In a train wreck BBC interview in 2019, the Duke denied ever meeting the teen.
Judge Kaplan also petitioned Australian authorities to assist the Duke’s legal team in deposing Giuffre’s therapist Dr. Judith Lightfoot and her husband, Robert Giuffre.
This is an excerpt from Fox News.
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