Norway’s crown princess says she was ‘manipulated’ in relationship with Epstein

Norway's Crown Princess Mette-Marit said Friday she had been "manipulated and deceived" in her past relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and expressed regret for not scrutinizing his background more closely.

"It is incredibly important for me to take responsibility for not checking his background more carefully. And to take responsibility for being so manipulated and deceived as I was," Mette-Marit told broadcaster NRK.

She said she wished she had never met Epstein and stressed that victims of what she described as "gross abuses" deserve justice.

"I feel such great anger that they haven't received it. At the same time, it's important for me to say that if I've done something that has contributed to giving him legitimacy in some way, it's terribly difficult for me, of course," she added.

Mette-Marit said Epstein was a close friend of a "good friend" of hers and that she was introduced to him through "mutual acquaintances." "They were people I trusted and trusted their judgment," she said.

After documents revealed a close relationship between the two, she described it as a "friendly relationship" and said it did not have a "different character."

In a 2011 email, she wrote that she had searched Epstein online and agreed it "didn't look too good," three years after he had pleaded guilty to charges and received a prison sentence. Asked what she had found, she said she did not remember.

"But if I had found information that made me realize that he was an abuser and sex offender, I wouldn't have written a smiley face behind it," she said.

Addressing reports that she stayed at Epstein's home in Palm Beach, Florida, for several days in January 2013, Mette-Marit said she went because a mutual friend had borrowed the house.

"The fact that I have been there and, not least, have a sense of guilt for the victims. I have spent a lot of time processing this. So it is very difficult for me personally and has actually been since 2019, when I became aware of the serious abuses," she said.

She said she never witnessed anything illegal during her visits or meetings with Epstein, but described an encounter that made her uncomfortable.

"When he arrived on the last day of our stay in Palm Beach, he put me in a situation that made me so insecure that I called (Crown Prince) Haakon's house," she said.

Mette-Marit did not provide further details. NRK reported it understood the incident was not an assault.

She said she remained in contact with Epstein for a time afterward, attributing it to his manipulative behavior and their shared acquaintances.

"I think it was probably because he was so manipulative that he used the fact that we had a mutual friend. That I am gullible. I like to believe the best about people. But I also chose to end contact with him, and it was because of episodes like that," she said.

Mette-Marit said she had trusted Epstein during a "demanding phase" of her life but later realized she was mistaken.

"I heard some more rumors that he wasn't a good person. Never that he was an abuser, but that he wasn't a good person. All of that together made me want to break off contact. But we had a mutual friend. I experienced him as caring towards this friend. That probably made me stay in touch with him longer than I wanted to," she added.

She also said she regrets not warning more people about Epstein after cutting ties.

On Jan. 30, the US Justice Department released more than 3 million pages of documents, 2,000 videos and 180,000 images under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which was signed into law last November.

The files revealed that several high-ranking Norwegian officials also had contact with Epstein, including former Prime Minister Thorbjorn Jagland and Crown Princess Mette-Marit.

Epstein was found dead in his New York City jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. In 2008, he pleaded guilty and was convicted of procuring a minor for prostitution, but critics call the relatively minor conviction a "sweetheart deal."