MovieChat Forums > Prince Andrew Discussion > What exactly has he done wrong?

What exactly has he done wrong?


The girl in question was 17.
Unless Andrew raped her, I'm baffled as to what he's done thats illegal?
She was willingly flown back and fourth (3 times allegedly) was paid handsomely and looks relaxed in their photo together.

I'm assuming that Andrew wasn't the first guy she'd had sex with (and it's not as if she quit her 'profession' afterwards) but it would seem that this 'lady' is only concerned with money (she took an out-of-court payment from Epstein years ago) and now seems to be looking for likewise against Andrew.

Without people getting all over-emotional (with their righteous hysterical false-accusations of paedophilia) could anyone please explain what Prince Andrew has done that is legally wrong (other than having sex with a prostitute) which, given his fame and wealth is something he'd hardly need to (knowingly) do anyhow?

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Okay. Here is the problem. To begin with the age of consent varies from state to state in the US. Some states have the age of consent as low as 14 and others have it at 18... they also have differences in how it is applied with some states having a so called Romeo and Juliet exemption where even if the age of consent was say 17 no statutory rape would occur is the other person was within 3 years of the supposed victims age.

However, the issue here is that the girl was under the age of 18, which means if she was taken to another state or out of the country where she then engaged in sex with someone, it became a federal crime of sex trafficking. Once you take a minor across state lines the state laws on age of consent are tossed aside and the federal laws kick in because you took a minor out of their home state. I don't know where the girl was living at the time she was boinking Andrew. If she lived in the state he boinked her in then you would look at the age of her and the age of consent in that state. But if he boinked her in a different state than where she lived it no longer matters what the age of consent in any state was it become a federal issue and 18 is the age that matters. In fact if she lived in state A where the age was 16 and was taken to state B where the age was 16 it would still be considered sex trafficking because she was still under 18.

Now you also have to understand that he is not being charged with any criminal violation. He is being sued in a civil court so the outcome will never involve prison time only monetary compensation.

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They allegedly had sex in London. How does any US Court have jurisdiction ?

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As soon as she was taken out of her home state it became sex trafficking under US law. If she was from New York and was taken to Florida it was sex trafficking, if she was from New York and was taken to the UK it was sex trafficking... The moment she was taken out of her home state anyone having sex with her if she was under 18 would be considered to be part of the sex trafficking... even if Andrew had no clue about her age or where she was from. In the US you have situations where someone goes to a club, the club IDs everyone that goes in and the guy meets a girl in the club and they hook up. If it turns out she was 16 and using a fake ID and the state's age limit was 17 he would be guilty of statutory rape and his belief that she was 21 because she was in a club where you had to be 21 doesn't matter and is no defense. Laws regarding sex with underage girls in the US will often catch people from other countries completely off guard because they are complicated and vary from state to state.

As for why the US Court has jurisdiction she is brought that action in a US Court under the claim that when the act happened she was a resident of the US. Now Andrew's lawyers tried to have the case tossed by claiming that she was no longer a resident in the US. However in the state she claimed to be a resident of Colorado, she need only state that at some time in the future she intends to return to Colorado. Making that statement would provide her with the same right to bring a lawsuit in the Colorado courts that a person living in the state today would have.

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So US Courts claim to have global legal jurisdiction. I doubt that the rest of the world would agree with them.

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Some countries don't agree. It all comes down to whether there are treaties in place between the US and the country the person resides in. In the case of Andrew the US and UK have treaties that allow it.

It is the reason that the convicted rapist Roman Polanski doesn't leave France for countries with an extradition treat with the US. The treaty the US and France have doesn't include the crime for which Polanski was convicted of so he cannot be extradited to the US from France, in the past Mark Rich was a 1%er from the US that committed tax fraud, he fled to Switzerland because the extradition treaties with the US and Switzerland don't allow extradition for financial crimes like tax evasion.

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I doubt that any UK Court would decide to extradite Prince Andrew to the US to face these charges.

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These aren't criminal charges, so there is no possibility of that. This is a civil matter not criminal... the criminal part only matters because it is the basis of the woman's civil lawsuit. But he would never have to show up. He doesn't even have to cooperate in the deposition that the woman's lawyers are asking for... the only thing that will happen if he chooses not to is that the court would issue a directed verdict in her favor based on his decision not to show up or cooperate in the trial. If she was asking for 20 million in damages she would normally get that 20 million judgement against Andrew... now the only question is how would she collect it, and that will be a matter of where Andrew's assets are held and whether the country they are held in have treaties for collecting this type of judgement. I have no clue where he keeps any money he may or may not have... but it may be untouchable it may not. At any rate the embarrassment would in having lost the lawsuit claiming he was involved in sex trafficking, that is probably worse than any monetary judgement in the eyes of his family.

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As soon as she was taken out of her home state it became sex trafficking under US law

Did she consent to it? If not then it would be kidnapping which it wasn't so how could she have been trafficked.

These aren't criminal charges

Then he has no charges to answer to and ergo no need to talk to anyone.

If she was asking for 20 million in damages

So she is after a pay day.

Sex trafficking is such because it is done illegally with the use of force, drugs and kidnapping. this person was not kidnapped, she was not trafficked. Supposedly she went 3 times so by the sounds of it looks like she consented. This just looks like a pay day as stated.

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In the US the consent of a minor doesn't matter when they are taken out of a state or out of the country for the purposes of sex. It doesn't matter if they ask to go, it is still considered to be kidnapping and sex trafficking...

As I pointed out there are no criminal charges being leveled against him... this is not to say they could not be as sex trafficking under federal law has no statute of limitations. I suspect the feds have not pursued charges against him because the US is trying not to embarrass the UK anymore than is already being done. However, what he says in the depositions could come back to haunt him. If he admits to having sex with her when she was underage and taken out of the US, then it is entirely within the realm of possibility for her to then file charges and have the Fed press charges against him. It is fankly another reason he would be within his best interest to settle quietly and tie the settlement to a NDA between her and him.

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Interesting. I do think age of consent at 18 doesn´t make much sense. Not that I think unmarried people at any age should be having sex.

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And now that Andrew has apparently decided to settle, we will never know anything more of this because you'll see her having to sign an NDA. The only potential problem going forward would be that in some circumstances the NDA are null and void if it covers up a criminal act which sex trafficking would be. I'm hoping he settles big and then she tells all and he gets fucked by the courts. So tired of these rich fuckers always buying themselves a get out of jail card.

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If it had gone to trial, wouldn´t it have been hard to prove that she was flown out "for the purposes of sex"? I mean, an easy defence could be that, she was flown for another purpose but just happen to have sex while there. I have no legal expertise so just throwing it out there.

"So tired of these rich f****** always buying themselves a get out of jail card."

Wasn´t this a civil case though? I am hard-pressed to see how PA would be charged with anything here that would result in him going to prison. The act occurred in the UK where the age of consent is 16, unless they could somehow prove that PA was complicit in the actual trafficking which I would assume this many years later would be very hard to prove.

For example, stat rape is not even a thing in the UK. If a girl misrepresents her age and consents to sex while being a minor, the person having sex with her can´t go to prison. This is what happened with Doug Richard, a judge from the TV show, Dragon´s Den who had sex with a 13yo who claimed to be 17.

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The problem is she was a US citizen taken from the US so the age of consent would be 18. Whether he knew she was underage or anything else doesn't matter, many men in the US have ended up in prison because of statutory rape charges when the underage girl lied about their age.

I have even seen cases where the girl had a fake ID she had used to get into a bar where you had to be 21 years but because she was not actually 21 the guy was found guilty. In the US there are some laws that do not require intent to commit the crime simply the act itself is enough even if you lacked any malice.

And yes this was a civil suit, so no prison involved in it. But this is the twist, in a civil suit you are not allowed to plead the fifth amendment and refuse to answer when giving testimony as you would able to do in a criminal trial... However, a prosecutor is free to use the court records in a civil trial as evidence in a criminal trial. So if PA had said he fucked her in London at a time when she was under 18, a federal prosecutor in the US could file the charges against PA and use his own testimony from the civil trial to convict him.

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Was she a US citizen? I thought she was Australian. So much legal wrangling, sounds super convoluted. That seems strange to me that you can be charged for a "crime" that isn´t a crime in the country it took place in just because the trial is taking place in the USA.
Cheers for the info though.

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She was born in the US and has never renounced her citizenship. I believe she also has Australian citizenship based on her current marriage, though it appears she's lived the majority of her life in the US.

And yes, there are some strange things in the US legal system, but look at it this way if you are a UK citizen that is taken from the UK to Italy where you are then beaten or worse wouldn't you expect the UK government to have interest in your plight?

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Yeah, I think support is one thing but I always thought whatever citizen you are, you are subject to the laws of the country you are visiting. No exceptions. For example, we dont have the death penalty for drug trafficking in Australia and we had a famous case of drug traffickers being tipped off about and caught in Bali by the Indonesian government. Some were executed and there wasn´t anything that could be done legally to save them.

Likewise there have been foreign victims of rape in the Middle East where there is very little legal recourse for them, in some cases they are actually the ones punished and imprisoned for making the "accusation" because of insane Sharia laws that protect muslim men.

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In this instance if each time she was taken out of her home state or country by her parents it wouldn't be an issue. If her mother or father had taken her to London on vacation and she had been raped in London the US government wouldn't get involved and even a civil lawsuit wouldn't have been possible in the US (assuming she was raped by a citizen from outside the US). Her ability to get the US courts involved hinged on her being taken out of the country unlawfully. It is the reason why in this country if you try to take a minor out of the US on a commercial flight the airline is required to see that the minor is either traveling with the parents or has a signed document from the parents allowing the minor to leave. This wasn't done in this case because Jeffery didn't use a commercial airline. In general this a rare instance that is unlikely to be repeated anytime soon.

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are you an attorney?

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Yes.

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You sounded like you knew what you were talking about. Refreshing.

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Not to mention that he didn't just happen upon this seventeen year-old at some bookstore and a relationship sprung from that. That would scandalous but ultimately forgivable. In this case, the girl in question was trafficked (coerced into prostitution) by Epstein and Maxwell. Andy knew this girl was trafficked and still exploited her. That is why he is rightfully catching all of this flak.

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Your definition of trafficked is "coerced into prostitution".

Your claim: "Andy knew this girl was trafficked and still exploited her. "
How do you know what Andy did or did not know?

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Sorry but we don't know he knew she was trafficked and we don't know if they had sex. It's purely she said / he said. At the moment all we have is hyperbole from the American legal team and a very botched TV interview from Andrew.
I'm not trying to defend the guy - I'm just struggling to understand why they think they have a case citing American law against something that happened in the UK. You can bet your arse that if the situation was reversed - citing UK law against something that happened in the USA - it would get exactly nowhere.

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Await the lawsuit and find out

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But: The prince has categorically denied he has had any form of sexual contact or relationship with Ms Giuffre, formerly known as Virginia Roberts.

So it's she said vs he said. Can she back up her claims?

Also, only Epstein and Maxwell can be charged with trafficing, not Andrew.

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This fool is guilty by association. You know damn well ANYONE who was hanging with Epstein knew what he did, and was "benefiting" from his business.

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He isn't being shunned by his relatives because one 17 year old sex worker came forward, he's being shunned because of all the stuff that wasn't made public. All the shady business deals made with sleazeballs like Epstein and his socially ambitious pals, all the other hookers who might still come forward, all the compromising photos that are in existence. Believe me they've hushed up a lot of shit, and they know damn well there's tons of nightmare fuel out there that may very well come to light some day, other hookers and photos and dirty money, because Andrew made at least four trips to Epstein's island and there isn't anything to do there that isn't shady, and a bazillionaire who owns an island can cover the entire surface area in video cameras.

If this were just one prostitute who was of age in some countries it might be laughed off with a "He's still Randy Andy", but Andrew spent a lot of time with Epstein and who knows where all the carefully collected blackmail info has ended up. No, Andrew is being ditched, because the royal family knows their only defense against future scandal is to declare him disgraced-and-out-of-favor now, which will take most of the force out of the future story about the 14 year old girl or how he became part owner of a slave-labor diamond mine or whatever the next scandal will be.







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I think that's very likely. Tip of the iceberg.

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This is the extremely rare case where I have absolutely no evidence, but know I'm right anyway!

No, there have to be people at The Firm who've been tasked with hushing up things that could have hit the press but didn't, which means that people at The Firm know some of the bad shit... and they've heard about worse but haven't been presented with proof.

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I wouldn't be surprised if he ended up dead in some accident... That family isn't shy of whacking their own if it serves their best interest, and their best interest is survival of the monarchy. Hell a dead Andrew at just the right time would suddenly get the family some sympathy.

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Whether he did anything illegal or not, his biggest problem was getting involved with Jeffrey Epstein at all. Anyone associated with that monster, whether innocuous or not, now carries his taint, particularly in the opaque way he carried out his "business" dealings with his rich and powerful customers/friends.

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Any wrongdoing seems to have been only a legal technicality. He certainly did nothing immoral, since she participated willingly and most certainly knew exactly what she was doing. His only crime was one of stupidity, for becoming involved with Epstein.

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