1 year ago
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During cross-examination in phone-hacking trial, prince tells of paranoia he felt as a result of Mirror articles
Prince Harry has said “vile” British tabloids had a “devastating impact” on his mental health by portraying him as an irresponsible “thicko” prone to underage drinking and drug taking.
The prince told the high court that the “constant intrusion by tabloid press” eventually forced him to move his family to California after he had endured a lifetime of coverage.
Piers Morgan, the former Daily Mirror editor, listened to messages left by his mother, Diana, Princess of Wales. Harry said he was left “physically sick” by the idea of Morgan listening to private messages and it had made him determined to hold the journalist “properly accountable for his unlawful activity towards both me and my mother”.
His voicemails were hacked by journalists while he was a schoolboy at Eton, and as a young man he had to hide in the boot of a car to avoid the paparazzi.
His relationship with his ex-girlfriend Chelsy Davy was undermined by “constant surveillance” by the tabloids that left them feeling “hunted by the media”.
He was deeply affected as a teenager by tabloid rumours that his real father was the army officer James Hewitt, saying such stories were “hurtful, mean and cruel”.
Tabloid coverage shaped how the public and army colleagues viewed him. “I was facing judgments and opinions based on what had been reported about me, true or not. I expected people to be thinking ‘he’s obviously going to fail this test, because he’s a thicko’,” he said.
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