Rome, 20 March (LaPresse) – ‘I was manipulated and deceived.’ This is how the Norwegian Crown Princess Mette-Marit described her friendship with Jeffrey Epstein in an interview with the public broadcaster NRK. ‘I wish I had never met him,’ she added, taking responsibility for ‘not having checked his background more carefully’. The Crown Princess, who exchanged emails with Epstein from 2011 to 2014, said she had met him through ‘mutual friends’. ‘It was a friendship,’ she emphasised, responding with a firm ‘no’ when asked if the relationship had been of a different nature.