When Sarah Ferguson, the former Duchess of York, was confronted in 2011 about her closeness to the paedophile billionaire Jeffrey Epstein she could not have been more fulsome in her regret.
“I personally, on behalf of myself, deeply regret that Jeffrey Epstein became involved in any way with me,” she said. “I abhor paedophilia and any sexual abuse of children and know that this was a gigantic error of judgment on my behalf. I am just so contrite I cannot say.”
In the interview with the Daily Telegraph, Ferguson admitted that she allowed Epstein to pay off £15,000 of her debts. “Whenever I can I will repay the money and will have nothing ever to do with Jeffrey Epstein ever again,” she added.
No sooner had Ferguson’s crisis-PR mea culpa hit the presses, however, than another operation was kicking into gear in the US, one to help Epstein launder his reputation – and one in which the former duchess was intended to play a major part.
The new tranche of files released on the late child sex offender reveal how he tried to leverage what he felt was his close relationship with Sarah Ferguson to bounce back from the disgrace of his conviction for soliciting underage girls in Florida.
Emails disclosed by the US justice department on Friday show that Epstein and his publicist detailed a plan to persuade Ferguson to release a statement saying he was “not a pedo” after she publicly distanced herself from him in the interview.
Epstein’s confidence that he could make Ferguson U-turn on her criticism may be born of the close relationship they shared, and of the many favours he had done for her down the years. An insider claimed he had been “blindsided” by the interview, adding: “They were very close until this point.”
As well revealing Epstein’s reputation redemption plot, files released yesterday show the extent to which Ferguson flattered and benefited from her relationship with the banker.
Ferguson continued her relationship with Epstein after he was jailed for child sex offences in 2008 and, while he was under house arrest the following year, described him as the “brother [she] always wished for”.
The week after Ferguson’s interview, Epstein discussed the situation with a crisis management publicist, Mike Sitrick. Epstein suggested Ferguson could release a statement saying she had been “duped” by lawyers representing some of his accusers.
“She now knows that what she was told was based on falsehoods, and fabrications designed to enhance their civil suit,” Epstein said. “She should out the newspapers on the offering of money for stories.”
Sitrick, understood to be working for lawyers Epstein had retained, responded saying they needed to put pressure on Ferguson to change her account. He said: “Agree, quite frankly whatever her excuse she needs to say she was mistaken, she apologises, feels terrible. Jeffrey is not a pedophile.
“The you [sic] woman who was the source of the conviction for solicitation of prostitutions for someone under 18 was 17-3/4 and she is very sorry. We need all those components. She created this problem. She needs to fix it and as I know everyone knows time is of the essence here.” In fact, Epstein had admitted soliciting sex from girls as young as 14.
In the exchange, Sitrick said that if Ferguson did not succumb to “gentle persuasion” he felt that they should “turn up the heat even to the point of sending her a draft defamation lawsuit”.
Although Epstein expressed concerns that he could not “depend” on Ferguson “doing as we would wish”, Sitrick replied that her retraction was “critical”. He said this would be “a major turning point and be picked up everywhere”.
He added: “This is about your name and your reputation. You really can’t worry about her, in my view, you need to worry about you. She certainly isn’t concerned about you or your reputation.”
Ferguson appears not to have made a public statement in support of Epstein. In private, however, she changed her tune again.
She emailed Epstein the next month to say she wanted to “humbly apologise” for her comments in the Telegraph and described him as her “supreme friend”. It is unclear if she was threatened with legal action, as discussed by Epstein and Sitrick.
In her email, she said: “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 added: “I was instructed to act with the utmost speed if I would have any chance of holding on to my career as a children’s book author and a children’s philanthropist. As you know, I did not, absolutely not, say the ‘P word’ [paedophile] about you but understand it was reported that I did.”
However, the relationship appears to have irreparably soured. Later that year, Epstein emailed the banker David Stern a link to a photograph of Ferguson at Beatrice’s graduation, which was featured in the Daily Mail. “Pic of F not the prettiest sight,” he said.
Ferguson’s apology email to Epstein was revealed by the Mail on Sunday in September. In response, a number of charities severed ties with Ferguson. Both she and Mountbatten-Windsor, the brother of King Charles, have been stripped of their royal titles amid the fallout from their friendship with Epstein.
The Epstein documents suggest that the former couple, who continued to live together after their divorce, separately continued to meet with Epstein after his first conviction.
Ferguson appears to have had lunch with Epstein in summer 2009, shortly after he was released from prison and placed on house arrest, and sought his advice on marketing her “Sarah Ferguson brand” to retailers.
She also suggests that she took her daughters to meet Epstein, adding: “I have never been more touched by a friends [sic] kindness than your compliment to me in front of my girls.”
In October that year, she discussed her financial woes with Epstein, saying: “I urgently need 20,000 pounds for rent today. The landlord has threatened to go to the newspapers if I don’t pay. Any brainwaves?”
In July 2010, Epstein asked Ferguson if there was “any chance of your daughters saying hello” to one of his associates, who was in London in July 2010. This person’s name was not revealed in the files. Ferguson replied that Beatrice was in London with Mountbatten-Windsor but Eugenie was “away with a cool boyfriend”. It is unclear if any meeting took place.
Just weeks later, Mountbatten-Windsor invited Epstein to Buckingham Palace, shortly after he was released from house arrest. And three months later again, in December 2010, the former prince visited the disgraced financier in New York, where they were pictured walking through Central Park.
Mountbatten-Windsor claimed in a catastrophic Newsnight interview in 2019 that he had travelled to the US to end his friendship with Epstein in person. However, the files revealed that the Hollywood publicist Peggy Siegal organised a star studded dinner for him at Epstein’s home during his visit.
Mountbatten-Windsor, who appears in the files to be pictured crouching over an unidentified woman, withdrew from royal life shortly afterwards. In 2022, he paid a reported £12m settlement to the late campaigner Virginia Giuffre, who alleged she was forced to have sex with him after being trafficked by Epstein. Mountbatten-Windsor has always denied wrongdoing and made the payment without admitting liability.
Sitrick declined to comment on the emails. Ferguson and Mountbatten-Windsor did not reply to requests for a response. Epstein died by suicide in a New York jail in 2019, while facing a fresh round of child sex abuse charges.
