NORWAY’s Crown Princess Mette-Marit said she was “manipulated” by convicted US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in an interview broadcast Friday in which she sought to explain their close relationship.
A commoner who married Crown Prince Haakon in 2001, Mette-Marit’s name appears multiple times in Epstein documents released by the US Department of Justice earlier this year.
The files revealed an unexpectedly close friendship between the pair and raised questions in Norway about whether Mette-Marit can become queen, with recent polls showing that a majority of Norwegians oppose the idea.
“Of course I wish I had never met him,” she told public broadcaster NRK during the roughly 20-minute interview.
“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,” she said.
She also sought to squash speculation about the nature of her relationship to Epstein, who pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting a minor for prostitution and died in 2019 while awaiting trial for sex trafficking.
“It was a friendly relationship: above all, he was a friend to me. But if your question is whether the relationship had another nature, the answer is no,” she said.
Mette-Marit has previously said in written statements that she deeply regretted her relationship with the disgraced financier.
According to email exchanges published in the Norwegian media, Mette-Marit wrote to Epstein in 2011 that she had “googled” him, adding “it didn’t look too good” and ending the sentence with a smiley emoji.
Epstein had been convicted three years earlier and served just over a year in prison.
Speaking to NRK, with tears occasionally welling up in her eyes and her husband Crown Prince Haakon seated next to her, Mette-Marit said she didn’t remember that specific email.
In 2012, when Epstein told Mette-Marit he was in Paris “on (a) wife hunt”, she replied that the French capital is “good for adultery” and “Scandis (are) better wife material”.
And in 2013, she and a friend stayed at Epstein’s house in Palm Beach, Florida, for four days.
Asked about the seemingly intimate tone of her emails with the financier, Mette-Marit said it was about “friendship”, and she found her now-published correspondence “embarrassing”.
She said she ended their friendship after several incidents, the details of which she did not disclose.
She felt “a little unsafe” after one of the incidents, Prince Haakon said.
“I’m not the one to feel sorry for,” the princess said. “It’s all the victims who’ve been subjected to these serious abuses who deserve justice.”