Affidavit Filed Reaffirms Allegations Against Dershowitz

UPDATED: January 23, 2015, at 3:24 p.m.

In the latest development in an ongoing legal dispute, a woman who previously accused Harvard Law School professor emeritus Alan M. Dershowitz of inappropriately having sexual relations with her when she was a minor has signed a sworn affidavit reaffirming her earlier allegations.

The woman, identified in court documents as “Jane Doe No. 3,” claims in the affidavit that she “had sexual intercourse with Dershowitz at least six times.” The woman and her lawyers had first leveled accusations against against Dershowitz in a Dec. 30 federal civil court filing, alleging that she had sexual relations with Dershowitz in multiple locations at the urgings of Jeffrey E. Epstein, a billionaire and Harvard donor who served prison time for soliciting prostitution.

The Dec. 30 and subsequent filings are part of an ongoing civil suit against the federal government that challenges Epstein’s plea deal, which Dershowitz negotiated.

When they surfaced, Dershowitz flatly denied the claims, calling them “totally false and totally made up in every respect.” He has since filed a motion to intervene in the case, he said to protect his reputation.

By Katherine M Kulik

In the affidavit reaffirming her claims, “Jane Doe No. 3” details her alleged sexual relationship with Dershowitz and writes that he has lied when denying her claims. She reasserted her claims that she had sex with Dershowitz in Epstein’s New York and Palm Beach homes, at Little Saint James Island in the U.S. Virgin Islands, at his New Mexico ranch, and on his plane.

“I have recently seen a former Harvard law professor identified as Alan Dershowitz on television calling me a ‘liar,’’’ she writes. “He is lying by denying that he had sex with me. That man is the same man that I had sex with at least six times.”

The first part of the 220-page Jan. 21 filing, written by “Jane Doe No. 3’s” lawyers, also casts doubt on the reliability of the plane manifests that Dershowitz had previously cited as evidence that the allegations against him could not be possible. Pointing to inconsistencies between the manifests and distinct flight logs kept by the private pilots of Epstein’s plane, the lawyers, Paul G. Cassell and Bradley J. Edwards, write that the logs “were likely designed to hide evidence of criminal activity—or perhaps later cleansed of such evidence.”

Those flight logs, included in the court documents, indicate that Dershowitz had traveled on Epstein’s plane, though not at the same time as “Jane Doe No.3.” Flight logs show that he flew from Palm Beach to New Jersey in 1998 with a passenger listed as “1 female,” although she is not named.

In an interview Thursday, Dershowitz again denied the allegations, saying that the claims in the affidavit are “totally and completely false” and that he will be able to prove his innocence. He denied altering the plane manifests later in an email, writing, “I hope they are [complete], because complete records would prove I was never on the plane with any young women.”

This most recent Jan 21. court filing is part of the alleged victim’s lawyers’ response to Dershowitz’s motion to intervene in the ongoing civil case challenging Epstein’s plea deal. It challenges the legitimacy of Dershowitz’s motion, arguing that he has ample opportunity to challenge the validity of the allegations against him because the lawyers have already sued him for defamation. In his public denials of the “Jane Doe No. 3’s” allegations, Dershowitz claimed that the lawyers knew the allegations were false.

Dershowitz’s criticism in interviews with a number of media outlets focused in particular on the fact that “Jane Doe No. 3’s” had not signed a sworn affidavit with her allegations. In an interview with The Crimson, Dershowitz alleged that “they didn’t submit a sworn affidavit because they know if they submit a sworn affidavit they would go to jail.”

“Jane Doe No. 3” filed her affidavit the same day as the release of a letter of support, signed by 38 Law School professors and developed over the course of a week, denouncing the procedures of the “recent attacks” against Professor Dershowitz.

Cassell and Edwards declined to comment beyond their filing.

—Staff writer Andrew M. Duehren can be reached at andy.duehren@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @aduehren.