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."
