Epstein Accuser Virginia Giuffre Drops Lawsuit Against Alan Dershowitz

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Virginia Giuffre, one of the late disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged trafficking victims, dropped a lawsuit on Tuesday against former Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz, a friend of Epstein’s whom she accused of sexually assaulting her when she was a teenager, saying she may have been mistaken.

Virginia Roberts Giuffre speaks during a press conference outside a Manhattan court in New York, … [+] Aug. 27, 2019.

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In court documents filed Tuesday, Giuffre and Dershowitz said they agreed to drop their lawsuits filed against each other in 2019 without any financial payments.

The filing ends four separate but related lawsuits: two defamation suits filed by Giuffre against Dershowitz, Dershowitz’s countersuit and another lawsuit filed against Dershowitz by Giuffre’s lawyer David Boies.

While Giuffre said in a statement that she has “long believed” she was trafficked by Epstein to Dershowitz, she said she was young at the time and in “a very stressful and traumatic environment” and may have “made a mistake” in identifying Dershowitz.

Giuffre said the litigation has been “very stressful and burdensome” for her and her family, who believe it’s time to “bring it to an end and move on with our lives,” she said.

In a statement, Dershowitz–who has always maintained his innocence–said he has come to believe that at the time Giuffre accused him, “she believed what she said” about her being trafficked to him by Epstein.

Dershowitz commended Giuffre for “her courage in now stating publicly that she may have been mistaken about me,” saying she suffered at the hands of Epstein and has done important work to combat sex trafficking.

Key Background

Dershowitz previously acted as Epstein’s lawyer in 2008, the first time criminal charges were filed against the financier. In a controversial deal with the Department of Justice, Epstein pleaded guilty to one state charge of soliciting sex from minors but avoided federal prosecution. Giuffre first publicly accused Dershowitz in 2014 of sexually assaulting her when she was a teenager in the early 2000s, but the statute of limitations by that time had passed for criminal charges to be filed. Dershowitz denied the accusations, and called Giuffre a “certified, complete, total liar.” In April 2019, Giuffre sued Dershowitz for defamation and he countersued in November. Boies sued Dershowitz for defamation the next day, after Dershowitz said Giuffre falsely accused him after facing pressure to do so from her lawyers, headed by Boies. In 2021 Giuffre also filed a lawsuit against Prince Andrew–another one of Epstein’s powerful friends–claiming he sexually assaulted her on three seperate ocassions. The two settled out of court in February for an undisclosed sum. Andrew did not admit to guilt in the filing but acknowledged Giuffre was “an established victim of abuse.” Ghislaine Maxwell, an associate of Epstein’s who Giuffre said lured young girls for him to abuse, was sentenced to 20 years in prison after being convicted on five counts of sex trafficking and other crimes. Epstein died by suicide in prison in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

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