A bombshell email obtained by The Mail on Sunday has revealed how the Duchess of York cynically lied when she pledged to cut ties with paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
Just weeks after publicly disowning the vile billionaire, Sarah Ferguson wrote him a gushing private message calling him a ‘steadfast, generous and supreme friend’ – and admitting she only distanced herself from him to save her own reputation.
The Duchess ‘humbly apologised’ to the convicted sex offender for letting him down, and said she had been told to speak out if she wanted to save her career as a children’s author.
She sent the grovelling message ‘from the truth of my heart’, less than two months after telling journalists: ‘I will never have anything to do with [Epstein] again.’
Those comments came on March 7, 2011, amid mounting pressure over the links she and ex-husband Prince Andrew had to the paedophile – and the £15,000 bail-out he gave her.
In an interview with the London Evening Standard she said that accepting his money was ‘a gigantic error of judgment… I am just so contrite I cannot say’.
Another email obtained by this newspaper, which the Duchess sent on January 22, 2011 – is addressed to ‘my dear, dear friend Jeffrey’ and appears to thank him for his recent help with the huge debts she had racked up after years of lavish spending.
She wrote: ‘How can I thank you enough? You are a friend indeed and I will one day give it to you back. But I can not have the words to thank you now.
A bombshell email obtained by The Mail on Sunday has revealed how the Duchess of York cynically lied when she pledged to cut ties with paedophile Jeffrey Epstein
Just weeks after publicly disowning the vile billionaire, Sarah Ferguson wrote him a gushing private message calling him a ‘steadfast, generous and supreme friend’ – and admitting she only distanced herself from him to save her own reputation
‘Sometimes the heart speaks better than the words. You have my heart. With lots of love, dear Jeffrey.’
The Duchess adopted a similarly appreciative tone in her email of April 26, 2011, apologising for disowning him – while also trying to reassure him that she had never described him as a paedophile.
She told him she had been instructed to give the interview to protect ‘my career as a children’s book author and children’s philanthropist’ adding that she was ‘broken’ because ‘I saw all my children’s work disappearing’.
Pleading with the child abuser, she added: ‘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.’
The extraordinary email will send shock waves through the Royal Family and will fuel calls for King Charles and Prince William to completely ostracise the disgraced Yorks.
It comes just days after the Duke and Duchess launched an ill-judged return to the public limelight with a prominent, and widely criticised, appearance at the funeral of the Duchess of Kent.
Royal author Andrew Lownie said last night: ‘The language of this extraordinary email is completely two-faced.
‘It is hugely damaging to her credibility as a patron of children’s charities and children’s author.
The bombshell emails sent by Fergie to Jeffrey Epstein – despite vowing to never contact him again during a newspaper interview
Epstein pictured in New York in 2011 around the time Fergie sent the damning emails to him
‘I have learnt to question everything the Duchess of York says in interviews. I think the wider Royal Family will be appalled by this – it’s yet more reputational damage.’
Last night a spokesman for the Duchess said that Epstein had threatened to sue her for defamation after her Evening Standard interview and she had been advised to try and ‘assuage’ him.
She stands by her public condemnation of the paedophile, the spokesman added.
Today’s astonishing revelations come after Lord Mandelson was fired as British Ambassador to Washington after a string of embarrassing emails between himself and Epstein – who was found dead in his jail cell in August 2019 – were released.
The emails between the billionaire and the Duchess were exchanged after he was released from a Florida jail in July 2009, having served 13 months of an 18 month sentence for soliciting prostitution from girls as young as 14.
Just under 18 months later, in December 2010, Epstein agreed to pay £15,000 owed in unpaid wages and other bills to Sarah’s former personal assistant, Johnny O’Sullivan.
The deal, orchestrated by Prince Andrew, allowed a wider restructuring of the Duchess’s debts, which were approaching £5million.
Details of Epstein’s generous assistance were uncovered by the media in March 2011, causing embarrassment to the Royal Family.
The beleagured couple attended the funeral of Katharine, Duchess of Kent, earlier this month
On March 7, 2011, in an interview splashed on the front page of the Evening Standard, the Duchess made a ‘heartfelt apology’ for accepting Epstein’s cash.
In comments that made headlines around the world, she said: ‘I personally, on behalf of myself, deeply regret that Jeffrey Epstein became involved in any way with me.
‘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.
‘Whenever I can, I will repay the money and have nothing ever to do with Jeffrey Epstein ever again.’
Castigating her former friend, she added: ‘What he did was wrong and for which he was rightly jailed.’
And, in apparent exasperation, she pledged to cut off all contact with him. ‘I will never have anything to do with him again. I deeply regret it. How many more times do you want me to underline that?’
But weeks later Sarah was privately disavowing her comments in the desperate email to Epstein revealed today.
Writing to her benefactor on April 26, she said: ‘You have always been a steadfast, generous and supreme friend to me and my family.
On March 7, 2011, in an interview splashed on the front page of the Evening Standard, the Duchess made a ‘heartfelt apology’ for accepting Epstein’s cash
‘As you know, I did not, absolutely not, say the “P word” [paedophile] about you but understand it was reported that I did.
‘However, I am apologising to you today for not replying to your email or reaching out to you when the tabloids were so horrendous.’
She angrily condemned the media, who she said ‘used me to hurt you beyond realms’, and complained that the controversy over her links to him ‘was the worst nightmare for me’.
Despite emphatically telling the Evening Standard that she would never have anything to do with Epstein again, she apologised for not contacting him sooner, saying: ‘It is unlike me’.
Justifying her lack of contact, she said: ‘I was advised, in no uncertain terms, to have nothing to do with you and to not speak or email you and if I did I would cause more problems to you, the Duke and myself.
‘I was broken and lost. I shut down and ran away. So please understand, as I do about you, that I was broken and not the strong person you know and I got completely obliterated and I saw all my children’s work disappearing.
‘I didn’t want to hurt Andrew one more time.’
She told Epstein ‘we are, and have both been, in the firing line’ adding that they had ‘both [been] blamed for stuff we have not done.’
The notorious 2001 photograph of Prince Andrew with his arm around 17-year-old Virginia Giuffre, who accused the billionaire of trafficking her
And, in perhaps the most jaw-dropping passage, she suggested that she had been told to give the interview as part of a strategy to protect her writing career and charity work.
‘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.’
She said she should have taken his advice before giving the interview ‘and taken a day or two to think of the ramifications of my actions but I was in overriding fear.’
In an emotional sign-off, she wrote: ‘In the meantime, I write this from the truth of my heart.’
Last night, a spokesman for the Duchess said: ‘The Duchess spoke of her regret about her association with Epstein many years ago, and as they have always been, her first thoughts are with his victims.
Fergie was my friend, but her lies are unforgiveable
Daphne Barak (left) with Sarah Ferguson
I first met Sarah Ferguson back in 1992 as her marriage to Prince Andrew was breaking down.
Sarah had agreed to sit down with me for her first television interview after notorious pictures caught her sucking the toes – or appearing to – of Texan financial adviser John Bryan.
The media coverage at the time was overwhelming and tough for anyone to deal with. But I liked Sarah, who was warm, bubbly and, it seemed to me, a force of nature.
We bumped into each other from time to time after that but it was only in the past few years that we reconnected.
By then, her former husband, Prince, Andrew, had been disgraced thanks to his own association with convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein – and stripped of his royal titles. Sarah found herself in a lonely place, trying to protect the father of her children and his damaged reputation.
There was something else, too: Sarah had breast cancer and we spent hours on the phone talking about it every day – months before she revealed the news to the public.
I can thank Sarah for pushing me to get my own mammogram, a decision which brought an early diagnosis and might well have saved my life. Today, I am cancer-free.
So, when, in the past few days, I established that Sarah has been untruthful about her contacts with Epstein, it came as a great personal shock. And it left me asking why.
I believe things started to unravel following her formal divorce from Andrew in 1996 which, although generous by normal standards, left Sarah struggling to maintain her lifestyle.
She developed the habit of befriending wealthy – but sometimes questionable – individuals and that habit has persisted.
I know Sarah has a bumpy ride. The cancer diagnosis and much else besides have been devastating.
But someone aspiring to have – and to maintain – Royal status must live by higher standards. Sarah has let herself down.
Who can believe her now? Where can she go from this? It hard not to believe the consequences will be serious.
Daphne Barak, interviewer and documentary maker
‘Like many people, she was taken in by his 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.
‘She does not resile from anything she said then.
‘This email was sent in the context of advice the Duchess was given to try to assuage Epstein and his threats.’
Biographer Andrew Lownie however, said the revelation could lead to publishers and charities severing their ties with the Duchess.
Best known for her Budgie the Helicopter, Little Red and Helping Hand series, Sarah Ferguson has published more than 50 children and young adult books.
In November, she is due to publish Kindness Along The Way, the second book in her new series of Flora & Fen picture books.
She announced the first book of the series last year with a post on Instagram in which she appeared to be standing on the balcony of a luxury Alpine chalet or hotel.
Meanwhile – 14 years after her grovelling email to Epstein – the Duchess also remains heavily involved in children’s charity work.
She chairs Sarah’s Trust, which brings all her charitable causes together, and which says it has supported 1.4 million children around the world.
Last year she launched the Youth Impact Council, which she said would ‘bring together future leaders’ and ‘amplify the voices’ of Gen Z people in the workplace.
Along with her daughters Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, the Duchess is also an honorary patron of the Teenage Cancer Trust.
The bombshell email comes just days after the Duke and Duchess of York were accused of making an ill-judged appearance at the funeral of the Duchess of Kent at Westminster Cathedral.
The scandal-hit pair, both 65, were seen chuckling together and awkwardly attempting to engage other Royals, including the King and Prince William, in conversation.
William was later said to be furious at his uncle’s ‘ambush’.
Andrew has long been tarnished by his associations with Epstein, especially the notorious 2001 photograph of him with his arm around 17-year-old Virginia Giuffre, who accused the billionaire of trafficking her.
Sarah Ferguson is believed to have first met Epstein in the 1990s having been introduced by American British businesswoman Lynn Forester de Rothschild, the widow of banking tycoon Sir Evelyn de Rothschild, once one of Britain’s richest men.
In a testimony published last month, Ghislaine Maxwell, the British socialite jailed for 20 years for sex trafficking, described the Duchess as a ‘frenemy’ who lusted after Epstein.
‘She [the Duchess of York] had a thing for him… and I thought that Sarah was trying to put the moves on Jeffrey,’ she said.
Daphne Barak is a renowned interviewer and documentary film maker, whose subjects have included Donald Trump, Hilary Clinton, Johnny Depp and Michael Jackson among many others.
Daphne is also a cancer survivor. She has a fast-growing charity with the University of California, San Diego. www.gamechanger.org
