Prince Andrew's accuser, Virginia Roberts, made a surprising move when she dropped her case against Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, claiming she might have made a "mistake." So, would the case withdrawal affect the Duke of York?
Royal expert Angela Levin believed it's "too late" for Prince Andrew to redeem himself even if Roberts admitted she might have mistaken Dershowitz for somebody else. With the extent of the damage to the royal family member's reputation, the admission may not even help him recover.
Roberts filed a case against the high-profile lawyer for allegedly being forced to have sex with him when she was young. She explained that she was "very young" then and in a "very stressful and traumatic environment" when she was still under Jeffrey Epstein's control.
Hence, her situation led her to mistakenly identify Dershowitz. So, she dropped the defamation case she brought against the lawyer in 2018 without financial payment made to either side.
This news came several months after Roberts and Prince Andrew had an out-of-the-court, ending the sex assault case. Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie's father reportedly paid $12 million, Daily Mail reported.
Roberts claimed she was also forced to have sex with Prince Andrew three times when she was only 17 at Epstein's command. The alleged favorite son of the late Queen Elizabeth II has vehemently denied the accusation.
So, would Roberts' latest move help clear Prince Andrew's reputation? Levin explained that the controversial royal's character is already "down the tubes," and it has been there for a very long time.
He, too, has already paid a settlement, so Roberts' admission of her mistake is already "too late for him."
Royal Richard Fitzwilliam, alternatively, said it's too early to tell if Roberts' decision to drop the case against Dershowitz would help Prince Andrew if he tried to "rehabilitate his reputation in the future." He has no public support and his friendship with a pedophile and the convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell have all led to his stepping down from his royal duties in disgrace.
It also stems from his catastrophic "Newsnight" interview and failure to help the FBI to investigate Epstein's other accomplices. His photo with Roberts was also never explained.
Meanwhile, Roberts, Dershowitz, and one of the former's lawyers, David Boies, announced her decision to resolve and drop the multiple defamation lawsuits they had filed against each other over the last six years, per USA Today. They said all pending litigation "had been dismissed with prejudice," so the cases would never be refiled.
