Norway's Crown Princess Mette-Marit has told national TV that she wishes she had never met late US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, breaking seven weeks of silence after the extent of her contacts with him emerged.
"I feel so manipulated, and when you are manipulated, you don't realise it from the start," Mette-Marit said in a 20-minute interview in which she was often on the verge of tears.
Seven weeks ago, Norwegians discovered that the crown princess had exchanged hundreds of emails with the disgraced Epstein between 2011 and 2014, and stayed in his Florida house when he was not there.
"It is incredibly important for me to take responsibility for not checking his background more carefully," she said.
"And to take responsibility for being so manipulated and deceived as I was."
She has already apologised and admitted to "poor judgement", after the close nature of her links to Epstein came to light when millions of Epstein files were released by the US justice department at the end of January.
"Of course I wish I had never met him," the princess told public broadcaster NRK, stressing that it was Epstein's victims who deserved justice for the great abuse they had suffered. She said she felt great anger they had not yet received it.
Her decision to speak publicly comes after intense scrutiny and pressure to explain herself, including from Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre.
The crown princess gave little away during the conversation, and some of her responses came across as defensive.
In 2011, three years after Epstein had been jailed for soliciting underage sex, she wrote: "Googled u after last email. Agree didn't look too good."
Sitting alongside her husband, Crown Prince Haakon during the interview, Mette-Marit maintained she "didn't know he was a sex offender or a predator", even though the reporter pointed out that a Wikipedia article on Epstein at the time had made clear he was a convicted abuser.
"I can't remember this; it was 15 years ago."
"I still didn't know anything about all the abuse. But I had understood enough that I thought he was a bad guy who people shouldn't have contact with," she told NRK. "And I had seen up close how he blackmailed others. So I regret that I didn't tell more people, because I should have."
She admitted to being too trusting of Epstein, but when asked why neither the palace nor the foreign ministry knew about her links to him, she said he was a "private contact" and she did not tell everyone about her private contacts.
Asked why she spent several days in Epstein's home in Palm Beach in 2013, she explained that it was down to an unnamed mutual acquaintance. "Epstein was a close friend of a good friend of mine," she said.
