Norway’s Crown Princess has said she was 'manipulated and deceived' by the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein after several emails were released.
Mette-Marit and Crown Prince Haakon, the heir to the throne, spoke to Norwegian broadcaster NRK in a 20-minute interview that occurred on the same day the criminal trial against her son, Marius Borg Høiby, concluded.
Prosecutors have sought a prison sentence of seven years and seven months for the charges against Høiby, Mette-Marit’s son from a previous relationship, who denies rape allegations. A verdict is expected in early June.
Thursday’s NRK interview (19 March) marked the first time the royal couple have sat down with reporters to address the fallout over the crown princess' ties to Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting sex-trafficking charges.
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Mette-Marit, who is not accused of any wrongdoing, first met the financier in 2011, and their contact continued into 2014.
Her links to Epstein were already known, but the latest documents point to a deeper, more sustained relationship.
The Epstein files contained several hundred mentions of the crown princess, who said in 2019 she regretted having had contact with him.
Mette-Marit told NRK she did not know he was a sex offender and abuser; she only saw him interact with adults and never witnessed anything illegal.
She also told NRK she feels a sense of guilt for Epstein’s victims and has spent years processing their relationship and the allegations against him, saying she takes responsibility for not researching his background thoroughly.
The Epstein files include email exchanges between the two and show a relationship that some perceived as a close friendship. In one message, Mette-Marit wrote to Epstein, 'you tickle my brain'.
In October 2012, Epstein wrote that he was in Paris 'on my wife hunt' with Mette-Marit replying that Paris was 'good for adultery' but 'Scandis' were 'better wife material'.
In another set of messages, the emails showed that Mette-Marit borrowed an Epstein-owned property in Palm Beach for several days in 2013.
Mette-Marit said the stay was arranged through a mutual friend, and it was this visit that resulted in the encounter that left her feeling so unsafe that she called Haakon at home.
She declined to elaborate during the NRK interview, but said she continued her contact with Epstein because she was gullible and had been manipulated.
"I was manipulated and deceived," she told NRK, adding: "Of course, I wish I had never met him.
"It is extremely important for me to acknowledge that I did not look into his past more carefully, and also to acknowledge that I was manipulated and deceived to such an extent."
Mette-Marit continued: "He used the fact that we had a mutual friend, and that I'm gullible.
"I like to believe the best about people. But I also chose to end contact with him."
She went on to claim: "I've never seen anything illegal."
The files also seem to clash with her 2019 apology, where she said she had failed to look into Epstein’s past and would never have had any contact with him had she known how serious his crimes were.
In an email from October 2011, sent three years after Epstein’s guilty plea, she told the disgraced financier she had looked him up online.
"It didn't look too good," she wrote, followed by a smiley face, telling NRK she couldn't remember why she wrote the email.
"But if I had found information that made me realise that he was an abuser and sex offender, I wouldn't have written a smiley face behind it," she continued.
"I'm not the one to feel sorry for," the 52-year-old princess added. "It's all the victims who've been subjected to these serious abuses who deserve justice."
Topics: Crime, Europe, Jeffrey Epstein, News, Politics, World News
Rhiannon Ingle