Norwegian Crown Princess Mette-Marit was publicly apologizing during the weekend, after it became known that she’d exchanged hundreds of personal emails with the late convicted sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein. The emails, some of which contain foul language and an unusual closeness between the two, were being made public just days before her own son, Marius Borg Høiby, goes on trial for 38 counts of criminal acts including rape and sexual assault.
It’s the latest in a series of scandals to hit the Norwegian royal family, and it’s generating widespread public criticism of Norway’s future queen. The release in the US of the so-called “Epstein files,” which chronicle how the wealthy former financier cultivated relationships for personal gain and to clear his name, has also revealed extensive contact between Epstein and Crown Princess Mette-Marit from 2011 to 2013.
The crown princess has earlier claimed she didn’t know about Epstein’s criminal past and exploitation of young women, but recently released email communication confirms that she had looked into his past in 2011 and even wrote to him at the time that it “didn’t look too good,” followed by a smiley face. Norwegian state broadcaster NRK and other media were also reporting on Sunday how Epstein and Mette-Marit had met on several occasions, wrote to and spoke with each other often, and how she even spent four days at his lavish estate in Palm Beach, Florida in 2013.
In one exchange in October 2012, Epstein had written that he was in Paris looking for a wife. She responded that it was “freezing” in Oslo, that Paris was “good for adultery” and that Scandinavians were “better wife material. But then again, who am I to talk?” She also wrote to him in 2012 that she thought he was “charming,” to which he replied “I know.”
Mette-Marit’s husband, Crown Prince Haakon, meanwhile, is only known to have met Epstein on one occasion, when the crown couple was on holiday in St Barts in the Caribbean and they ran into him on the street. Palace officials claimed during the weekend that Mette-Marit never visited Epstein on his private island in the Caribbean, where he’s known to have abused and exploited young women. In another email released along with thousands of others, Mette-Marit wrote to Epstein: “I miss you, my crazy friend.”
After initially admitting regret over what both she and Royal Palace officials called “poor judgment” over her relationship with Epstein, Mette-Marit has now confirmed “borrowing” Epstein’s estate in Palm Beach and apologized for all the contact they had. She said she now regrets having had any contact with Epstein, even calling their relationship “embarrassing” in retrospect.
Commentators were not forgiving, with author and veteran editor Harald Stanghelle among those criticizing Mette-Marit for “more than just poor judgment and embarrassing.” Epstein had initially been convicted for sexual assaults in 2008 and seemed intent on rebuilding a network of powerful and entitled people around him including various royals like Mette-Marit, who’d been a single mother working in a restaurant when she met Crown Prince Haakon in the late 1990s. They married in 2001 and should be celebrating their silver wedding anniversary in August.
On Tuesday her oldest son Marius from before she met the crown prince will go on trial for sexual assault and abuse and other charges not unlike those faced by Epstein, who was later found dead in prison in 2019 after he’d been arrested again. Stanghelle told NRK that he couldn’t understand why palace staff, security personnel or others around the crown couple hadn’t stepped in and warned Mette-Marit of the possible consequences of her relationship with Epstein.
Others also questioned why palace staff hadn’t asked more questions about Mette-Marit’s correspondence with Epstein, much of which was sent over her official email address from “HKH Kronprinsessen” (Her Royal Highness the Crown Princess). “Where were the palace officials in all this?,” wondered Ole-Jørgen Schulerud-Hansen, a royal commentator for TV2 in Norway. “They (Epstein and Mette-Marit) have discussed shopping tips, book tips, dentists (Epstein reportedly suggested the crown princess could benefit from teeth-whitening treatments) and other things that leave an impression of more personal correspondence than we were aware of.” He noted how the crown couple “has a whole gang of advisers around them who should have found out about this even if the crown princess wasn’t aware of his conviction in 2008.”
Neither Crown Princess Mette-Marit nor Crown Prince Haakon, meanwhile, will be in the courtroom when the trial against their son and step-son begins in Oslo on Tuesday. Haakon told reporters late last week that his wife, who awaits a possible lung transplant, will be off on a “private trip” while both he and his parents, King Harald and Queen Sonja, have several royal duties in the weeks ahead, not least at the Winter Olympics in Italy. Both Crown Prince Haakon and his father, now age 88, have expressed sympathy for Høiby’s alleged victims and called his upcoming trial “challenging and difficult for all involved.”
NewsinEnglish.no staff
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