Prince Andrew's sexual assault accuser has signed a multi-million dollar book deal.
Prince Andrew was accused of sexual assault by Virginia Giuffre
Virginia Giuffre - who had accused late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his one-time girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell of arranging and forcing her into having sex with the Duke of York when he was 17 - has reportedly agreed a deal with publishers to write her life story, shortly before the confidentiality clause she agreed to when settling her lawsuit with the disgraced royal is expected to expire.
Though multiple sources confirmed the news to the New York Post newspaper, it is unknown which publisher has won the rights.
Andrew is believed to have paid around $12 million to settle the case out of court last February, though has denied any wrongdoing, and is now said to have been consulting lawyers in the hope of overturning the settlement agreement.
In November, Virginia - who now lives in Australia - dropped a sexual abuse claim against Alan Dershowitz, admitting after an eight-year legal battle she "may have made a mistake" in claiming Donald Trump's former lawyer had abused her as a teenager, and the prince reportedly believes the "extraordinary" development has raised questions around her credibility, giving him hope to clear his name.
A batch of court records relating to Virginia's lawsuit against Maxwell, which was settled in May 2017, included a 139-page manuscript called 'The Billionaire's Playboy Club' which detailed her life as a sex slave for more than two years when she was 17 and spoke of the encounters she had with Epstein and his associates, including an allegation she was "pimped out" to high-profile men including Andrew and Alan.
She wrote in the unpublished book: “It wasn’t easy meeting the sexual desires of these strange men, the Prince being one of them."
Virginia claimed the manuscript was "99 per cent true", though her lawyers admitted some was "fictionalised" and she later confirmed a two-night liaison with the duke in New Mexico had never happened.
Andrew's lawyers wanted the manuscript considered as evidence in the civil case but the request was denied by the judge.
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