Norway’s crown princess says she was ‘manipulated and deceived’ by Epstein

OSLO – Norway’s Crown Princess Mette-Marit said on March 20 she regretted her friendship with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, seeking to contain one of the biggest scandals to hit the country’s royal family.

The US Justice Department’s release of millions of Epstein documents has sent shockwaves around the world, revealing the disgraced financier’s ties to prominent people, including the crown princess and top Norwegian politicians, business executives and diplomats.

“I was manipulated and deceived,” the crown princess said in an interview with public broadcaster NRK.

“Of course, I wish I had never met him,” she said of Epstein.

Files show frequent contact

The files showed frequent communication between Princess Mette-Marit and Epstein that occurred long after he pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting an underage girl. The 52-year-old crown princess, who apologised to King Harald and Queen Sonja in a Feb 6 statement, has not been accused of any criminal wrongdoing.

While earlier media coverage had shown that she had links to Epstein, the new documents showed a more extensive relation, triggering an unusual rebuke by the prime minister and leading to demands that she should give a full account.

On March 20, Norway’s Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere noted that Princess Mette-Marit had answered questions about her relationship with Epstein, noting its importance.

“She regretted her contact with him and she was genuinely remorseful. She took responsibility for not having checked his background more thoroughly,” he said in an e-mailed statement to Reuters.

The princess, the spouse of Crown Prince Haakon, the heir to the throne, maintained contact with Epstein from 2011 to 2014, and stayed at his Palm Beach house for four days during a private trip in 2013, the US files show.

“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 said.

“I’ve never seen anything illegal,” the crown princess told NRK.

The Epstein files appeared to contradict a statement she gave in 2019, in which she apologised for not having investigated his past and said she would never have associated with him had she known the seriousness of the crimes he committed.

In one released e-mail from October 2011, three years after Epstein pleaded guilty, the princess wrote to him that she had Googled him and that she agreed “it didn’t look too good”, followed by a smiley.

When asked about the e-mail by NRK, she said she could not remember why she wrote it.

“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 said.

Personal struggles

Sitting beside her, Princess Mette-Marit’s husband Haakon said he supported his wife at a difficult time and that marriage is both for “the good days and the bad”.

“Mette is caring, wise and really strong. And that’s why I will always have her on the team when something difficult happens,” the crown prince said.

While Prince Haakon and the rest of the royal family have maintained a busy schedule – including visiting the Winter Olympics in Italy and attending functions in Norway – the crown princess has not appeared in public for weeks.

Suffering from a chronic lung disease that will eventually require her to have a lung transplant, she is also dealing with the trial of her eldest son from a previous relationship, who is accused of rape and other crimes.

Her son Marius Borg Hoiby, 29, has declared himself not guilty of rape and domestic abuse while admitting in court to some lesser charges.

The royal family's popularity has taken a hit in recent months, a February survey of 1,009 respondents showed.

Some 60 per cent of Norwegians supported the monarchy, down from 70 per cent in January, according to the Norstat poll published on Feb 21 by public broadcaster NRK, while 27 per cent supported a republic, up from 19 per cent over the same period. REUTERS