Looks like the BBC interview didn’t do Randy Andy any favors after all. After several years of crusading against Jeffrey Epstein and his sex-trafficking empire, Virginia Roberts Giuffre has taken legal aim at the royal family. Giuffre filed suit last night against Prince Andrew, whose public bumbling practically invited the lawsuit:

Britain’s Prince Andrew has been sued in New York by a woman who said she was forced to have sexual encounters with the prominent royal while she was trafficked beginning at age 16 by his friend Jeffrey Epstein, including at the late sex offender’s sprawling mansion in Manhattan.

Virginia Giuffre’s lawsuit was filed in federal court in Manhattan on Monday, citing the state’s Child Victims Act, legislation passed several years ago that extended the statute of limitations for adults who were allegedly abused as children to sue. The lawsuit was filed just as Giuffre’s Aug. 14 deadline to do so was nearing.

Attorneys for Andrew, the Duke of York, who are located in Britain, did not respond to an email request seeking comment Monday night. Andrew has repeatedly denied having had any sexual encounter with Giuffre, although questions over his ties to Epstein led to him stepping down from public duties in November 2019.

The filing says Andrew abused Giuffre several times when she was 17, calling damage done to her by the conduct “severe and lasting.”

Guiffre might have sued regardless, but Andrew’s incompetent attempts to spin his way out of the Epstein story cinched it. Not only did he cross Giuffre in attempting to negate her allegations, his explanations were so unconvincing that he made himself into an easy target. Attorneys must have been salivating at the chance to get Andrew in a deposition.

That won’t happen, of course, but Giuffre says it doesn’t matter much:

“I am holding Prince Andrew accountable for what he did to me,” she said. “The powerful and rich are not exempt from being held responsible for their actions. I hope that other victims will see that it is possible not to live in silence and fear, but to reclaim one’s life by speaking out and demanding justice.

“I did not come to this decision lightly,” she added. “As a mother and a wife, my family comes first — and I know that this action will subject me to further attacks by Prince Andrew and his surrogates — but I knew if I did not pursue this action, I would be letting them and victims everywhere down.”

At this point, the smartest choice Andrew could make is to stay out of sight for, oh, the rest of his life. His attorneys have already declined to negotiate with Giuffre’s legal team, and one has to assume that they will refuse to respond to the lawsuit. Attempting to fight it will require Andrew to submit to depositions, and the BBC interview made it painfully clear that he can’t argue his way out of a paper bag.

That strategy would produce a default judgment in Giuffre’s favor, but that avoids a jury trial and the terrible publicity for Windsor Inc that it would generate. Furthermore, it’s not clear that Giuffre would ever collect a dime; her attorneys would have to work through British courts to collect any judgments, and Windsor Inc has a decided home advantage there. If Andrew engaged on this in a US trial and lost, British courts might have no excuse to prevent collection, given that Andrew would have recognized the jurisdiction of US courts. A default might provide some political cover to protect the royal family’s assets. Maybe.

For now, however, we can all just be satisfied by watching Andrew squirm. Perhaps it will serve as an object lesson to rich and powerful people to be careful about exploiting people just because you can. It’s possible to outlive your impunity, as Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell found out the hard way.