March 20 (UPI) — Norway’s Crown Princess Mette-Marit said she was “manipulated and deceived” by late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in her first interview about the relationship that lasted years.
Mette-Marit, who is married to Crown Prince Haakon, had a long-term friendship with Epstein, as shown in their emails released in the Epstein files in February by the U.S. Department of Justice.
She said in the interview with Norwegian broadcaster NRK that she “did not know he was a sex offender or an abuser.” But one email in 2011 said she Googled him after he had been sentenced to 18 months in prison and had pleaded guilty to soliciting from girls as young as 14.
She said she now wishes she had never met him.
Mette-Marit decided to do the interview after scrutiny and pressure to explain, including from Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre.
The Norwegian parliament voted Tuesday to create an independent commission to investigate connections between Epstein and the Norwegian foreign office, The Guardian reported.
The palace has released a past statement in which Mette-Marit admitted she had shown “poor judgment” and expressed “deep regret at having had any contact with Epstein.” Other than this, Mette-Marit has stayed mute on the matter.
Mette-Marit and Haakon did the 20-minute interview Thursday with Norwegian broadcaster NRK at their home, the royal residence Skaugum, near Oslo. It was broadcast Friday.
Mette-Marit’s oldest son, Marius Borg Høiby, is facing seven years in prison for 39 charges that include four counts of rape. She also has pulmonary fibrosis and has said she needs a lung transplant.
“I am the mother of a young man who has been in a very demanding situation,” she told NRK. “In addition, I have health that requires a lot of rest. And it has developed even more.”
“It is incredibly important for me to take responsibility for not checking [Epstein’s] background more carefully. And to take responsibility for being so manipulated and deceived as I was,” she said.
She described her “great anger” that Epstein’s sex trafficking victims have not seen justice. “At the same time, it’s important for me to say if I’ve done something that has contributed to giving him legitimacy in some way.”
Mette-Marit said she was introduced to Epstein through mutual acquaintances in 2011 when she was a special envoy for the United Nations Aids Program.
In the October 2011 email, Mette-Marit wrote: “Googled you after the previous email. Agreed, it didn’t look good :).”
The interviewer asked what she meant, and she said she didn’t know.
“I spent a lot of time trying to figure that out myself. I wish I had the rest of that email correspondence,” she said. “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.”
The interviewer mentioned a Wikipedia article that was available at that time saying he was a convicted rapist.
“It’s hard for me to say, because I can’t remember. But I didn’t know he was a sex offender or an abuser, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Mette-Marit also stayed at Epstein’s home in Palm Beach, Fla., in 2013, the files showed.
She said she went to the house because “a mutual friend of ours had borrowed the house” but that it is “one of the things I have spent the most time processing after the serious abuses became known in 2019.”
“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,” she said.
Mette-Marit mentioned a “situation” that made her feel uneasy on the last day of her stay, but she refused to elaborate, except to say she called her husband about it. Haakon told the interviewer that he remembers the call and that it made his wife feel “unsafe.”
But she stayed friends with Epstein after the incident.
“I am overly trusting, I tend to think the best of people,” she said. “But I also chose to end all direct contact with him. And it was because of such episodes as that.”
