NEW YORK (Reuters) -Britain’s Prince Andrew plans to challenge a U.S. court’s jurisdiction over a civil lawsuit by a woman who accused him of sexually assaulting and battering her two decades ago, according to a Monday court filing.
In the filing with the U.S. District Court in Manhattan, a lawyer for Andrew said the prince also plans to contest that he was properly served with the lawsuit by Virginia Giuffre, who has said she was also abused by the financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Lawyers for Giuffre did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Andrew, 61, is one of the most prominent people linked to Epstein, who U.S. prosecutors charged in July 2019 with sexually exploiting dozens of girls and women.
Epstein, a registered sex offender, killed himself at age 66 in a Manhattan jail on Aug. 10, 2019.
Giuffre has accused Andrew of forcing her in 2001, when she was 17, to have unwanted sexual intercourse at the London home of Ghislaine Maxwell, the British socialite and Epstein’s longtime associate.
Giuffre also said Andrew abused her at Epstein’s mansion on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, and on a private island Epstein owned in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Andrew has denied Giuffre’s claims of sexual abuse.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
