Multiple charities are distancing themselves from Sarah Ferguson after a controversial email to Jeffrey Epstein reemerged.
According to the BBC, a children’s hospice charity known as Julia’s House was the first to end any partnership with the Duchess of York this week.
On Monday, September 22, the Teenage Cancer Trust, the British Heart Foundation, the Children’s Literacy Charity and Prevent Breast Cancer also announced they had dropped the duchess as a patron.
“We were disturbed to read of Sarah, Duchess of York’s, correspondence with Jeffrey Epstein,” The Natasha Allergy Research Foundation cofounders Nadim and Tanya Ednan-Laperouse said in a statement to CBS News. “Sarah Ferguson has not been actively involved with the charity for some years. She was a patron but in the light of the recent revelations, we have taken the decision that it would be inappropriate for her to continue to be associated with the charity. We would like to thank her for her kindness and support in the past.”
Us Weekly has reached out to Ferguson’s rep for comment.
Over the weekend, two newspapers published an email reportedly sent by Ferguson, 65, to Epstein in 2011. The Sun and the Mail on Sunday reported that the email was sent weeks after the duchess had publicly distanced herself from the disgraced financier.
A spokesperson for Ferguson said the email was to counter a threat Epstein had made to sue her for defamation.
“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,” the spokesperson said in a statement to the BBC. “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.”
Sarah Ferguson Daniele Venturelli / Getty Images
The spokesperson added that the duchess stood by her public condemnation of Epstein.
“She does not resile from anything she said then,” the statement continued. “This email was sent in the context of advice the duchess was given to try to assuage Epstein and his threats.”
In the email, Ferguson reportedly wrote to Epstein that he has “always been a steadfast, generous and supreme friend to me and my family.”
But in a separate March 2011 interview, Ferguson said her involvement with Epstein had been a “gigantic error of judgment.”
“I cannot state more strongly that I know a terrible, terrible error of judgment was made, my having anything to do with Jeffrey Epstein,” she said. “What he did was wrong and for which he was rightly jailed.”
Epstein died by suicide in 2019 while he was in a New York City jail awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
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