Longtime Jeffrey Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre has agreed to drop her defamation lawsuit against former Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz – saying Tuesday that she may have made a “mistake” in identifying him as one of the men she was forced to have sex with.
In a stipulation dismissing the Manhattan federal court suit, attorneys for Giuffre and Dershowitz said neither party would be awarded costs or legal fees as part of the settlement.
“I now recognize I may have made a mistake in identifying Mr. Dershowitz,” Giuffre, 39, said in a statement. “However, I was very young at the time, it was a very stressful and traumatic environment.
“This litigation has been very stressful and burdensome for me and my family, and we believe it is time to bring it to an end and move on with our lives,” she said.
Giuffre has alleged she was sex-trafficked by Epstein after meeting the multi-millionaire pedophile through Ghislaine Maxwell, who scouted her as a potential victim at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida.
The well-connected financier trafficked her to a number of his high-powered friends, Giuffre alleged, including Dershowitz.
She sued the legal scholar in 2019 for defamation after he called her a “total liar” over the claim. Dershowitz had then countersued Giuffre.
According to the Tuesday filing, both parties have agreed not to sue again and waived their rights to appeal.
Dershowitz and Giuffre’s attorney David Boies have also agreed to dismiss suits against one another, including a claim brought by Dershowitz that accused Boies of an extortion plot against him.
“I also now believe that my allegations that David Boies engaged in an extortion plot and in suborning perjury were mistaken,” Dershowitz said in a statement.
Boies said: “I agree with Mr. Dershowitz and Ms. Giuffre that the time has come to end this litigation and move on.”
“I know that Alan Dershowitz has suffered greatly from the allegation of sexual abuse made against him – an allegation that he has consistently, and vehemently, denied,” the high-profile attorney wrote in a statemetn. “I also know that this litigation has imposed, and continues to impose, a significant burden on Ms. Giuffre.”
Earlier this year, Giuffre reached a settlement in the suit she brought against the UK’s Prince Andrew, who she also claimed she was sex-trafficked to as a teen.
When that suit settled in March, Andrew admitted no wrongdoing, but wrote in a letter that he regretted his association with Epstein.
“Prince Andrew has never intended to malign Ms. Giuffre’s character, and he accepts that she has suffered both as an established victim of abuse and as a result of unfair public attacks,” the letter states.
Epstein died in a lower Manhattan jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges in the Southern District of New York. His death was later ruled a suicide.
Maxwell was convicted at trial in Manhattan federal court of sex trafficking and other crimes and sentenced in June to 20 years in prison.
She is serving time at a low-security prison near Tallahassee, Florida.
