Jeffrey Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre says she may have incorrectly accused Alan Dershowitz of sexual abuse,
Giuffre settled a defamation lawsuit against the famed attorney last week and claimed that she may have mistakenly accused him of sexually abusing her when she was a minor, the New York Times reported. “I may have made a mistake,” Giuffre said.
Before Epstein’s death in 2019, Giuffre filed a lawsuit against him and received $500,000.
Giuffre also accused the U.K.’s Prince Andrew of having sex with her when she was underage. The lawsuit was settled back in February of this year, with Prince Andrew agreeing to pay Giuffre a confidential amount without admitting any guilt.
In 2014, Giuffre publicly accused Dershowitz, who was friends with Epstein, of sexually abusing her as a teenager. She claimed the two had sex multiples times aboard Epstein’s plane – the so-called “Lolita Express” — and at Epstein’s homes in New York, New Mexico, and the Virgin Islands.
Following the accusations, Dershowitz told the New York Times that he regretted representing Epstein in his 2008 case, during which his client pleaded guilty to one count of soliciting prostitution and one count of procuring a person under 18 for prostitution.
“I think I do regret having taken the case in light of everything that has happened since,” Dershowitz said. “If I could give back the money I made in this case and have this episode of my life erased, I’d do it.”
Giuffre filed a lawsuit against Dershowitz in 2019 for allegedly defaming her in response to sexual abuse allegations she made against him. Dershowitz then filed a separate defamation lawsuit against Giuffre.
Last week, Giuffre agreed to dismiss her case. As a result, both lawsuits were concluded with no payments paid by either party, according to the court filing.
“I have long believed that I was trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein to Alan Dershowitz. However, I was very young at the time, it was a very stressful and traumatic environment, and Mr. Dershowitz has from the beginning consistently denied these allegations,” Giuffre said in a statement about the settlement, the New York Times reported. “I now recognize I may have made a mistake in identifying Mr. Dershowitz.”
Dershowitz stated, “She has suffered much at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein, and I commend her work combating the evil of sex trafficking.”
“She now recognizes that she may have made a mistake in falsely identifying me and that I have maintained my total innocence from the beginning,” Dershowitz told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “The matter is now closed. My innocence is clear.”