Melinda French Gates has finally broken silence on ex-husband Bill Gates's name appearing in convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein's files.
According to NBC News, Melinda, in her first comments after the release of Epstein files, said that she felt “unbelievable sadness” on seeing her ex-husband’s name in the recent release of over three million documents by the Department of Justice.
The 61-year-old on Tuesday, February 3, appeared on NPR’s Wild Card podcast, in which she opened up about the difficulties in her marriage with the Microsoft co-founder while urging him to explain his link with the paedophile.
She said, “For me, it's personally hard whenever those details come up, right? Because it brings back memories of some very, very painful times in my marriage. Whatever questions remain there ... for those people, and for even my ex-husband, they need to answer to those things, not me.”
Melinda even acknowledged that she is so happy that her marriage with Gates is over and now she is “away from all the muck that was there.”
“No girl should ever be put in the situation that they were put in by Epstein and whatever was going on with all of the various people around him. No, girl. I mean, it’s just — it’s beyond heartbreaking. I remember being those ages those girls were. I remember my daughters being those ages,” she added.
Gates was one of the high-profile personalities mentioned in the millions of files related to Epstein, who died in his jail cell in 2019.The recent batch of the documents released by the DoJ on Friday, January 30, included an email that Epstein sent to himself in 2013 which claimed that the billionaire philanthropist caught a sexually transmitted disease and allegedly secretly gave antibiotics to Melinda.
Gates’ spokesperson has denied all the allegations and described all the claims as “absolutely absurd and false.”
Melinda and Gates got married in January 1994, and they ended their 27-year marriage in August 2021. She later revealed that the businessman had been with a Microsoft staffer in 2019.
