Fergie’s Dismissal of Epstein Victims Amid All The Evidence ‘Tells Us Everything’: Expert

Trigger Warning: This article contains themes of sexual abuse that some readers may find distressing.

As the full scale of Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes became impossible to deny, many of those once close to him tried to distance themselves. Sarah Ferguson, however, followed a different path. Emails, interviews, and testimony now suggest that even as public understanding of Epstein shifted decisively toward his victims, the former Duchess of York continued to view him through a far more forgiving — and troubling — lens.

According to royal biographer Andrew Lownie, who wrote Entitled: The Rise and Fall of The Yorks, it could not have been a momentary lapse or a decision clouded by loyalty. It was instead a consistent pattern of belief and behaviour that saw Ferguson dismiss the women who accused Epstein, accept his version of events, and maintain a relationship long after his conviction for sexual offences involving a minor. 

Per Lownie, what was a fundamental contradiction was between what Fergusson claimed to believe and how she actually behaved. “There is a central contradiction in what Sarah Ferguson claims to believe and what she actually believes. She believes that Jeffrey Epstein was innocent and, like Peter Mandelson, took at face value his explanation for his crime of procuring a child for p-----------. That it was overblown, a set-up and an honest mistake,” Lownie wrote on his Substack. That belief, per Lownie, played out in real decisions, sustained contact, and a closeness that continued long after Epstein’s 2008 conviction. Lownie said, “I wrote in Entitled that she may have received millions from Epstein and that she stayed at his properties until at least 2015. He even had security staff dress up in royal-style livery to make her feel at home.”

Her behaviour following Epstein’s imprisonment, Lownie argues, further undermines any suggestion that she took the allegations seriously. “We know she didn’t believe the accusations because she was in contact with Epstein when he was in prison; she took her daughters to see him within a week of him leaving prison, and she spoke to him in the effusive language of a loved-up teenage girl,” he wrote. 

However, publicly, she tried taking a different stance. Referring to a video where Ferguson is talking about the accusations against Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor in 2015, Lownie wrote, "She expresses her fury at the Virginia Giuffre allegations, and we get a pretty good idea of what she presumably thought about Giuffre’s allegations against her ‘supreme …. brother … legend’ friend Epstein.” Lownie suggests Ferguson may have seen Epstein not as an abuser, but as someone like herself — a victim of scandal, media intrusion, and public judgment.

As Epstein’s crimes became undeniable, Lownie contrasts Ferguson’s response with that of others in Epstein’s circle — including Peter Mandelson, who has claimed ignorance until Epstein’s death. For Lownie, the most telling detail is what Ferguson has refused to do. “If Sarah Ferguson, Andrew, and Peter Mandelson really believed that Epstein was guilty, then it’s unfathomable that they have been so reluctant to help any of the authorities with their investigations.”

Their silence, he says, speaks louder than anything else.“That they have remained silent until the evidence of their friendship became undeniable tells us everything we need to know.”

If you are being subjected to sexual assault, or know of anyone who is, please call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800.656.HOPE (4673)

 If you know of any children who are being subjected to abuse, please contact The Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at (800) 422-4453