Thoughts on Beatrice & Eugenie re the Epstein scandal?

[TheRealGossipGirl]

For a long time, I felt sorry for Beatrice and Eugenie. I thought they were just caught up in their parents’ mess, paying the price for Andrew and Sarah’s awful judgement. Poor girls, wrong family, wrong parents, etc.

But new reports have really shifted that for me. Leaked emails suggest Sarah Ferguson was “the first to celebrate” Jeffrey Epstein’s release from prison, and apparently did so with both daughters in tow. At the time, Beatrice was around 20 and Eugenie 19 - not children. Fully grown young adults.

And this wasn’t before everything came out. Epstein had already been to prison by then. They would have known who he was, why he was jailed, and what sort of man he was. He wasn’t some vague family friend with rumours - he was a convicted sex offender. Many of his victims were the same age as them.

I’m finding it hard to buy the idea that they were completely clueless or had no understanding of what was going on. Yes, parental pressure is real, and Fergie’s judgement is notoriously dreadful - but at 19 and 20, you’re old enough to know that celebrating a paedophile’s release is deeply wrong.

So are they really as innocent as they’re often portrayed?

Quite right @Dollymylove . My own DC are a similar age to the age the sisters would have been and although I am not a controlling/coercive parent, I could imagine them coming with me if I thought it was OK to continue to visit a dodgy longstanding family friend.

There was a lot of innocent 'Oh £100k ' wedding present from someone I dont know has just landed in my bank account. How nice of them!' going on. Who would gave thought that such gullible and credulous innocent lambs would have the brains and business acumen to do lecturing tours of the Middle East talking about 'tech' just a few years later, and with no discernable learning or experience in the meantime?

Eff me @CurlewKate. Used to drive me mad when my 60 year old plus ex MIL kept referring to her cackling coterie as 'Girls' let alone this entitled bunch of to**ers.

Totally agree

Always remember Shamima Begum was 15 and we treated her like a grown adult. These princesses are 4 and 5 years older than that. They knew

There is a difference between young abused women brought up having neglect and abuse normalised, some homeless, others whos abusive parents hawked them around hotels for money being offered baubles by rich people and a couole of pampered princesses who, despite having awful parents were away at boarding school, had the best education money could buy and doors opened to them at every step during their adulthood. Unless you think being brought up in the RF is an abusive environment.

Yup @RainbowBagels. Let's not forget the overpriced sale of dilapidated gifted house from then Queen to dodgy buyer. They really think, and appear to be, above the law.

I can’t stand the two girls. Please give them a little office job somewhere and stop pushing them on the public.

Now would be a good time for Charles to declare that going only children of the heir get prince/princess titles and that their children don’t and strip them of their princess titles. By all accounts they make much of them being princesses ‘by blood’ and that genetic legacy from their parents is irredeemably tainted now.
I agree. I think only the heir should be required to be a ' working Royal' too. But that would mean all The Kings grandchildren being stripoed of tirles apart from George

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They “must have been horrified”… Not horrified enough to dissociate themselves from their parents though. And this is Mumsnet-where people are encouraged to go NC with their parents on a regular basis. “MY df and dm took enormous sums of money from a convicted sex trafficker, and invited him to our birthday party. And my df turns out to have been a massive pervert. Would I be unreasonable to go low contact?” Give me a break!!

I couldn’t agree more. Well said.

I feel quite sorry for them. Their parents encouraged them to spend time with a man who was trafficking girls and women their age.

I also agree that it's not a binary thing - childhood and adulthood. It doesn't sit well with me to say that Virginia Guiffre was a victim because she was a year and a bit younger than Eugenie but Eugenie is a complicit adult. It's not as simple as that.

Just because they are wealthy and privileged doesn't mean they weren't victims too.

My question would be, are we judging them now, with the benefit of hindsight and all of the information we now know about JE? I doubt their parents saw him has guilty & so probably spun them a line or 3. I do still feel a bit bad for them. For example, the email Sarah sent about one of them being on a s**ing holiday. I doubt very much they were aware that’s how their parents spoke of them amongst their friends.
That said, no sleep is lost on them.

There's also ridiculous double standards across threads here - in another thread posters are claiming that poor 40 something William was forced by Charles to drive Andrew to church and spend time with him, long after much more had come out about Andrew and Epstein, but 19 year old Eugenie is expected to have been able to stand up to her parents.

I can’t imagine how anyone would want to socialise with a convicted sex offender, let alone a paedophile.
Well I can - either they were desperate for money, or they were frightened of being blackmailed.
The sycophantic obsequiousness of everyone towards JE just blows my mind.

Agree - I am definitely not losing sleep over it either, but I do feel a bit sorry for them. And I think there are far far more men and women who were fully complicit in Epstein's various misdeeds to be pointing the finger at over two very young women dragged into it by their parents.

This. I don’t think either of them thought about it much. About anything much I suspect. Like all the royals, a totally skewed sense of what is normal, no need to have morals when you are that rich and privileged.

Odious bunch of grifters.

The weird thing is that it's not uncommon.

People are often absolutely horrified by the monsters they see on the news or in the papers, but when it's Uncle Dave, John from footie or 'good pal Jeremy' it's somehow different - they're misunderstood or it was a set up or it was over exaggerated or the woman was to blame.

It's incredibly common for the friends (and especially family) of monsters like Epstein to behave as the Yorks and others around him have done.

I don't know it's purely grooming or perhaps a weird need to not believe, but it blows my mind. Yet it doesn't surprise me either as it's such a common thing.

A tiny detail in Entitled stuck in my mind…

Andrew Lownie describes a Royal event where a plan to invite children from local authority schools into a royal box was allegedly blocked when one of Prince Andrew's daughters objected, requesting that the box instead only be joined by "the sort of people who shop at John Lewis".

I wish I could remember the event but I have lent my copy to a colleague!

If that is true, and I think Lownie is pretty meticulous in his sourcing, then that is pretty damning.

Of course it might only be one of them who is petty and snobbish, but I remember that overall in the book, Lownie gives the impression that although Beatrice and Eugenie were raised to be polite and personable, the princesses were brought up largely by nannies, and when they weren’t with staff, they were party to social gatherings where children should not be present, and as adults they experienced a gilded cage existence where they expect opportunities to fall in to their laps because they always have done!

So my position is that I think the princesses are accustomed to a grifting way of life where interesting job opportunities, prestigious invitations and valuable gifts simply “arrive” and probably, up to this point, they have not given it all much critical thought as they were raised to believe their own family’s hype about their position in the world. And to an extent, I don’t blame them for their naivety.

Now however they are in their mid-thirties, with dc of their own, independent incomes (presumably?) through their husbands, and they can read newspapers and listen to the news like any other person, and although it’s difficult to distance yourself from parents who you love, I think they would be very wise to do so publically, officially and in reality. Otherwise, I don’t think they can be trusted.

I think the people saying poor 40 something William ( a man known for stubbornness) are the same people saying ' poor 19 year old Eugenie'. Its the infantalising of a family whos children are expected to be imposed on us as the First Family and provide the ahead of State. Its continuing with the giant teddy bear buying for a 12 year old.

I see SF’s “charity” is closing down.

Have you seen the charity’s mission statement: (from bbc news)

“The charity Sarah's Trust was established in 2020 and is "dedicated to supporting frontline, grassroots work to address the humanitarian and environmental crisis, the hunger crisis and issues perpetuating cycles of extreme poverty", according to its website

I mean, that’s quite a remit isn’t it? End poverty, hunger, exploitation and the climate crisis. 🙄 I’d love to have a look at their accounts. See how much she took out.

I don’t believe they knew half of what their parents were doing or who they associated with. Doesn’t give them a free pass exactly but ignorance is bliss.

Now they’re older they definitely should separate themselves from at least their father.

Interesting…

Agree that they should all be rowed through traitor's gate to the tower. We have all the arcane pageantry when these jokers die or get married or become a 'Lord' in Mandelsons case ... so let's bring it back for when they betray their country too.