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Sarah Ferguson has been spotted at a remote Irish retreat as she attempts to deal with the public disgrace caused by her association with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Just weeks after she checked in to the luxury rehabilitation facility Paracelsus Recovery in Zurich, the former Duchess of York was seenat Donegal Airport, in northwest Ireland, reportedly on her way to the Ballyliffin Lodge & Spa.
A source told the Daily Mail that she had been hiding out since she and her former husband, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, were turfed out of their home at Royal Lodge in Windsor earlier this month.
The Ballyliffin Lodge in Donegal is reportedly where Sarah Ferguson is spending time hiding out. Photo / Ballyliffin Lodge
“Last time Sarah visited Donegal, she spoke about how it was somewhere she could escape to when things were ‘overwhelming’ – and they can’t ever have been more overwhelming for her than they have been in recent weeks,” the source is quoted as saying.
“And just as she did with the Zurich trip, she knew what she was going to in Donegal as she’d been there before – that it was very remote and very discreet, so there was minimal chance of her presence becoming known to the wider world.”
The Daily Express speculated that she might be trying to cut costs, given that Ballyliffin charges a fraction of the Swiss retreat’s £91,147 ($205,400) treatment plans.
Ferguson stayed at Ballyliffin twice in 2024, sharing a TikTok video of herself enjoying the “most beautiful, wonderful blast of fresh air” on a nearby beach. She described the stay as her solution when things felt “overwhelming”.
The US Department of Justice’s release of the Epstein files has reignited public scrutiny of Ferguson’s long friendship with the convicted paedophile.
Photographs released in the Epstein files showed Sarah Ferguson with a woman whose identity has been hidden. Photo / US Department of Justice
Emails sent by a person calling herself “Sarah” ask Epstein for house assistant work and praise him as a dear friend, even after he was imprisoned for soliciting an underage girl.
Since the scandal broke, Ferguson has been dropped from her roles at several charities.
“She seems to be very keen indeed to avoid being seen while she works out what to do next”, the source told the Daily Mail.
Speculation around whether the 66-year-old will move to the United Arab Emirates has been rife since her last public appearance in December last year.
But she has also publicly commented on her regard for Ireland, where she has ancestral roots through her great-grandmother, Viscountess Powerscourt.
“The Irish people gave me back my life, and I feel very strongly that I went back to the core values”, she told reporters at a 2005 event in Sligo, western Ireland.
“I think that is why I feel so comfortable in Ireland, because the Irish people accept Sarah as Sarah, instead of trying to make her into anything else.”
