Seven weeks have passed since the US Department of Justice released thousands of documents from the Epstein investigation. These included email correspondence between Mette-Marit and the now-deceased sex offender.
Since then, the Crown Princess has kept a low profile. On Thursday, she was interviewed by NRK together with Crown Prince Haakon.
"We are a family that has been in a very demanding situation in recent weeks," says Mette-Marit.
She takes responsibility for not checking Epstein's background and for "being as manipulated and deceived as I was."
The Crown Princess: Just be friends
In one of the emails from 2011, Mette-Marit wrote that she had searched for Epstein online. "I agree, it didn't look good :)" the Crown Princess replied.
According to Mette-Marit, she has pondered what it was all about and says she doesn't remember - but if she had found information that made her understand he was a perpetrator, the smiley would not have been added.
Despite many emails in which the tone can be perceived as flirtatious, she emphasizes that the relationship was only friendly.
The emails reveal that in 2013 she was allowed to borrow one of Epstein's homes, in Palm Beach, Florida, for several days. She says the time there was difficult to process. She says that something happened there that eventually made her end contact with Epstein.
Carrying heavy feelings of guilt
According to Mette-Marit, Epstein behaved in a way that made her feel unsafe, and she called Crown Prince Haakon at home. She does not want to go into what happened.
She had contact with him for some time after that.
"I think it was because he was so manipulative that he took advantage of the fact that we had a mutual friend. That I am gullible. I like to believe the best about people," says Mette-Marit.
She says she has never seen anything illegal, but that she carries great feelings of guilt for all the victims. It has been tough personally since 2019 when she became aware of the abuse.
When she broke off contact with Epstein, she hoped that no one would find out about the relationship - only Haakon and her friends knew about it, but not the Norwegian court or the security police.
We don't go around informing people about our private friendships. Neither the Ministry of Foreign Affairs nor the palace were informed. It doesn't work that way. Our privacy is important to us. And then it's my responsibility, says Mette-Marit.
Facts: The Jeffrey Epstein case
An investigation into financier Jeffrey Epstein began in 2005, after a 14-year-old girl told police that she had been molested by Epstein at his home in Palm Beach, Florida. The investigation grew and in 2007 he was indicted in federal court.
After a plea bargain, Epstein was sentenced to 18 months in prison for sex trafficking in 2008. He was released after 13 months.
The case received renewed attention in 2018, after a series of articles in the Miami Herald newspaper in which women came forward and accused Epstein of sexual assault during the period from 2001 to 2005.
In 2019, Epstein was arrested at an airport in New Jersey. The new charges against him concern the abuse of dozens of underage girls from 2002 to 2005. Epstein denies any wrongdoing.
On August 10, 2019, Epstein was found dead in his Manhattan jail cell. He was taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, he appears to have taken his own life.
