The Duchess of York privately apologised to Jeffrey Epstein weeks after publicly disowning the convicted sex offender, leaked emails suggest. Sarah Ferguson is said to have written to Epstein in April 2011, telling him she “humbly” apologised and that she had been instructed to distance herself to protect her career.
The emails, obtained by the Mail on Sunday, follow an interview Ferguson gave to the Evening Standard in March 2011, in which she described her involvement with Epstein as a “gigantic error of judgment”. Epstein had been jailed three years earlier for soliciting prostitution from a minor. Ferguson had also faced criticism over revelations that Epstein provided £15,000 to help pay off her debts, and over her ex-husband Prince Andrew’s links to the financier.
In the email dated 26 April, Ferguson wrote: “I know you feel hellaciously let down by me from what you were either told or read and I must humbly apologise to you and your heart for that.” She insisted she had not called him a paedophile, and that she had been “instructed to act with the utmost speed” to preserve her work as a children’s book author and philanthropist.
A spokesperson for the duchess said the email was written in response to a threat by Epstein to sue her for defamation. They said Ferguson stood by her public condemnation, adding: “Like many people, she was taken in by [Epstein’s] lies. As soon as she was aware of the extent of the allegations against him, she not only cut off contact but condemned him publicly, to the extent that he then threatened to sue her for defamation for associating him with paedophilia.”
Ferguson, who in the email described Epstein as a “steadfast, generous and supreme friend”, has published more than 50 children’s books since 1989, with a new picture book due in November. She is also a patron of the Teenage Cancer Trust and a breast cancer charity alongside her daughters.
