Prince Harry Addresses ‘Abuse, Intrusion, and Hate’ from Tabloids During Testimony

During Prince Harry’s second day at London’s High Court to testify against the Mirror Group — parent company to British tabloids The Mirror, The Sunday Mirror, and The Sunday People — he further detailed the “abuse, intrusion, and hate” he has experienced as a result of the group’s alleged hacking of his cellphone more than a decade ago.

Yesterday, the royal presented a 55-page written statement and commented on the stand about his tumultuous relationship with the press. Today’s testimony focused more on the personal relationships that were directly impacted by the media’s alleged trespassing. “The surveillance I was under was quite disturbing,” he said, according to court transcripts from The New York Times.

“I certainly wasn’t discussing our relationship in these kind of details with anyone inside the Palace,” Prince Harry said in a statement about his relationship with former girlfriend Chelsy Davy, which was dissected in a September 2007 article from The Sunday People. “Given the hours I was working at the time, it’s likely Chelsy and I did exchange voicemails even more often than normal, so I now believe that this information must have come from the hacking of our voicemails.”

This was one of 34 stories that the trial is centered around, all published between 1995 and 2011. In another instance, the royal backed his argument that the tabloids had to have had access to his private messages by questioning how they knew when to be where while capturing their exclusives about himself and Davy. In his written statement, he questioned: “The reason I had dropped her off where I did was to avoid any members of the public seeing us by chance, so what are the chances of someone waiting at the archway, at the specific moment I dropped her off, with a camera ready?”

Carline Flack, the late television host and presenter, was also mentioned during today’s testimony as Prince Harry recalled being “livid” when photographs of them captured in a paparazzi ambush were later published. “This evening was strictly between myself, Caroline — who is no longer with us — and Mark Dyer,” he stated. The royal claimed that they had to have been “stalked” for the photos to have been taken in the first place. It was an instance that struck him so much that it’s the only article of the nearly three dozen centered in the trial that he actually recalls reading at the exact time that it was published.

David Sherborne, Prince Harry’s lawyer leading the courtroom arguments, presented a court document to the court regarding a story about Harry and Flack. “This is an email that Katie Hind, the author of this article, is sending to someone at The Mirror,” he said. “We can see here that she’s forwarding under the subject ‘pin numbers’ a description of how to hack a phone from a celebrity voicemail greeting website.”

The Mirror Group has denied hacking Prince Harry’s phone, though it did admit in 2014 to having hacked other public figures. During today’s testimony, the defense lawyer for the tabloids asked the royal whether he would be “relieved or disappointed” if the courts were to find that he actually had not been hacked by their journalists. In response, the prince stated that he would “feel some injustice” if that were the case.

“So you want to have been phone hacked?” the defense lawyer countered, frustrating Prince Harry who issued a forceful response: “Nobody wants to have been phone hacked, my lord.”