Virginia Giuffre clears Alan Dershowitz of sexual abuse as they settle lawsuit

Virginia Giuffre has admitted she might have been wrong to accuse Alan Dershowitz of sexual abuse in a new court filing, bringing to an end a three-year legal battle between the pair.Ms Giuffre said in a statement to the New York Times she genuinely believed the claims, but that she was young and in a stressful and trauamtic environment while being sexually trafficked and abused by Jeffrey Epstein. Defamation lawsuits brought by both Ms Giuffre and Mr Dershowitz against each other have now been dropped without any costs or fee awards to either parties.Mr Dershowitz, a Harvard emeritus law professor, had consistently denied all allegations of sexual misconduct by Ms Giuffre.In a statement to the Times, Mr Dershowitz praised her having the courage to admit a mistake. ‘She has suffered much at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein and I commend her work combating the evil of sex trafficking,’ Mr. Dershowitz said.In April 2019, Ms Giuffre sued Mr Dershowitz for defamation and emotional distress after he called her a ‘complete, total liar’.Mr Dershowitz then counter-sued and the case had been due to go to trial next year in federal court in New York. Virginia Giuffre has said she was wrong to accuse Alan Dershowitz Alan Dershowitz has consistently maintained his innocence Epstein was arrested in July 2019 and charged with federal sex trafficking charges related to his abuse of underage girls at properties in Florida, the Caribbean, New York and New Mexico, over several decades.He was found dead in his cell in at the Metropolitan Correctional Centre in Manhattan just over a month later while awaiting trial. In July 2020, Ghislaine Maxwell was arrested and charged with trafficking underage victims for Epstein and participating in the abuse of young girls herself.During a six week trial in late 2021, prosecutors chose not to call Ms Giuffre as one of four witnesses who testified of the abuse they suffered from Maxwell.Maxwell was convicted of charges including including sex trafficking, conspiracy and transportation of a minor for illegal sexual activity, and sentenced to 20 years in prison in June.In an interview in July, Mr Dershowitz told The Independent that he had never seen young or naked women on his visits to Epstein’s home in Palm Beach and his private island Little Saint James.’It was a deep dark secret. Everything he did he did in a part of the house which was off limits to anybody,’ he said.’Nobody knew any of this, nobody would have associated with Epstein if we had known any of this.’Ms Giuffre has said in interviews and court documents that she met Maxwell while working at Mar-a-Lago in the mid-2000s. She said she was trafficked to locations around the world to have sex with Epstein and his associates, including Prince Andrew.In February, Prince Andrew agreed to pay an undisclosed settlement fee rumored to be around $3.4m to $5.6m to avoid a civil trial on the sexual assault allegations in New York.