Out of court settlements should be illegal.

[Rev. Rye]

Hadn' t the statute of limitations ran out?

Yep, it did. At least the criminal SoL did. And now that I have some information on what the New York SoL for cases like that was at the time, I can do some more elaboration.

Giuffre filed the suit due to the State of New York expanding the SoL for cases such as these. Since Giuffre was 17 in March 2001, when the abuse was alleged to have taken place, under the old law, she would have either until March 2006 to file criminal charges, or her 21st birthday in August 2004 to file a civil lawsuit. She did neither.

Then in August 2019, Governor Cuomo temporarily expanded the SoL for such cases. For criminal cases, it was until the victim reached the age of 28, and for civil cases, until the victim reached 55 years old. When the SoL changed, she was 36, therefore, a civil suit was her only option.

[Pat Mustard]

Just for the record, the case Virginia Giuffre filed was actually a civil suit, not a criminal one, therefore, that payout was probably the only thing she was ever going to get out of him. This was not an issue of Prince Andrew and his lawyers talking the courts into turning a criminal case into a civil one, or the lawyers making a plea deal where he has to pay such and such amount of money instead of going to jail.

It probably could have been a criminal suit at some point, but that would hinge on the criminal statute of limitations not passing, and due to the varying degrees of sexual assault on the books in New York, not even going into how the 2019 change to the SoL in New York changed matters, I'm not certain whether or not they even could have done it. I suspect that if a criminal case had much of a chance of going anywhere, they probably would have just extradited him to New York (bear in mind that the Royal Family appears to have washed their hands of him completely in recent years) and done that.

Feel free to say that it's shit that a rapist can settle out of court instead of going to jail (because, frankly, it is), I'm just saying there's a legal reason it ended up going that way. And, frankly, if there was no chance of a criminal case against him, the civil option at least provides some degree of justice, even if it's miniscule.

Actually, it's only in the last few months that he's been distanced from the royal family, and then only because prince William has an uncommonly good head on his shoulders. Elizabeth would still have Andrew at the centre of things, he's her favourite, and Charles has absolutely no sense in him at all. Andrew is still part of the council of state.