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Sean CoughlanRoyal correspondent

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EPA

Seven charities have dropped the Duchess of York as a patron or ambassador after an email from 2011 revealed that she called sex offender Jeffrey Epstein her "supreme friend" and seemed to apologise for her public criticism of him.

Julia's House, a children's hospice, was the first to remove Sarah Ferguson, Prince Andrew's ex-wife, saying it was "inappropriate" for her to continue in the role.

The Teenage Cancer Trust, Natasha Allergy Research Foundation, Children's Literacy Charity, National Foundation for Retired Service Animals and Prevent Breast Cancer also announced they had dropped the duchess as patron.

The British Heart Foundation said she would no longer be its ambassador.

A spokesperson for the duchess said she was not commenting on the charities' decisions to end their links with her.

It comes after the Mail on Sunday and Sun newspapers published a 2011 email from the duchess to Epstein, which appears to have been sent after she had publicly claimed to have broken off contact with him.

In the email, she appeared to privately apologise for her public rejection of Epstein, saying: "You have always been a steadfast, generous and supreme friend to me and my family."

That seemed to contradict her public denunciation of Epstein in an interview from a few weeks earlier, in which she had said her involvement with him, including borrowing money, had been a "gigantic error of judgement" and that: "What he did was wrong and for which he was rightly jailed."

The duchess had said she would "have nothing ever to do with Jeffrey Epstein ever again" only for the later email to say she "humbly apologised" to him and "know you feel hellaciously let down by me".

A spokesperson for the duchess said her subsequent email to Epstein, describing him as a friend, was written to counter a threat from him to sue her for defamation - and that she still really regretted any association with him.

"This email was sent in the context of advice the duchess was given to try to assuage Epstein and his threats," said a statement from her spokesman, when the email to Epstein had been published at the weekend.

Reuters

The response to the emergence of the email - sent several years after Epstein's jailing for sex offences in 2008 - was for a series of charities to cut their links with the duchess.

That included the Teenage Cancer Trust, where she had been patron for 35 years.

She also ended her role at Julia's House charity, which supports families in Dorset and Wiltshire, where the duchess had been patron since 2018.

The Natasha Allergy Research Foundation ended its connection with the duchess, who had been patron since it was founded in 2019.

The duchess had joined forces with Prevent Breast Cancer in 2024 following her own breast cancer treatment the year before.

Sarah Ferguson's former husband, the Duke of York, had previously had to stand down as a working royal and lost his patronages after challenges over his own associations with Epstein, including in a BBC Newsnight interview in 2019.

Prince Andrew's contact with Epstein had continued after he had been released from jail - with the prince being photographed with Epstein in New York's Central Park in 2010.

In the US there has been increasing pressure for the release of any information about Epstein and his famous connections, which has seen more details and documents emerging, including messages in an alleged "birthday book".

Supportive messages from Peter Mandelson to Epstein saw him sacked as Britain's ambassador to the US earlier this month.

Reuters

The avalanche of charities cutting ties will have been deeply embarrassing for the duchess, when much of her remaining public profile has been about such philanthropy and particularly causes involving children.

The charities deemed her no longer "appropriate" to be their representative, suggesting how badly her brand has been damaged by her connections with Epstein.

Those links to Epstein are like a tanker slowly leaking out toxic pollution and tarnishing those it touches.

The tipping point for the charities has been the awkward email exchange, which raises further questions about how long her contact continued with Epstein.

And there will be close attention paid to anything more about Prince Andrew's links to Epstein that might emerge from any new caches of documents being released in the US.

Prince Andrew's links with Epstein have been an unrelenting source of embarrassment for the royals.

When President Trump visited the UK last week, an image of the prince with Epstein was projected on to the walls of Windsor Castle, along with images of the visiting president.

So far the duchess has been a great survivor in royal circles. She's kept bouncing back. Last Christmas she was praised by royal insiders for helping to keep Prince Andrew away from public events when he was caught up in a Chinese spy scandal.

The Christmas before she had been back in the royal fold, joining a royal Christmas gathering in Sandringham for the first time in decades. That was despite the Duke and Duchess of York not being working royals or allowed to be part of official royal events.

But this latest scandal is going to raise difficult questions about any future return - and Buckingham Palace might want the duke and duchess to keep their distance.