Prince Andrew accuser’s Epstein settlement to be made public on January 3

A confidential 2009 settlement Virginia Giuffre reached with Jeffrey Epstein will be made public on January 3 as part of a lawsuit in which she claims the disgraced financier “lent” her out sexually to Britain's Prince Andrew.

US District Judge Loretta Preska in Manhattan said the document, which was filed under seal in lawsuits by Ms Giuffre against Prince Andrew and Alan Dershowitz, an emeritus Harvard Law School professor, will be fully unsealed and available in public court records.

Judge Preska had previously ordered that the document be unsealed unless a party in the two lawsuits or a representative of Epstein’s estate could demonstrate “good cause” for it to remain under seal.

“No such showing has been made,” she said in a written order on Wednesday.

Ms Giuffre sued Mr Dershowitz for defamation in 2019 after the legal scholar repeatedly denied her claims that he had had sex with her when she was a teenager and called her a liar.

Mr Dershowitz denies the claims and has countersued.

She then sued Prince Andrew in August, claiming he had sexually abused her, which he has denied.

Prince Andrew and Mr Dershowitz have both argued that the settlement provides a legal release from Ms Giuffre’s claims against them.

Ms Giuffre claims she was sexually abused by Epstein, who died in his New York jail cell in 2019, and that he forced her to have sex with his powerful friends.

The judge's ruling came as jurors convicted Epstein’s former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell of trafficking underage girls for sex.