Harassment By Tabloids Impacted Mental Health: Prince Harry Gives Evidence In Phone Hacking Trial

Prince Harry Tuesday arrived at Rolls Building at the High Court in London to present evidence in the phone hacking trial. His witness statement has been recorded in court.

Prince Harry Tuesday arrived at Rolls Building at the High Court in London to present evidence in the phone hacking trial. His witness statement has been recorded in court. According to the BBC, Prince Harry, and three other people, are taking a newspaper publisher to court, alleging information about them was illegally gathered to generate stories. They said, as per the report, journalists from the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and The People exploited a security gap to access their voicemails and hear messages left by friends and family.

Notably, BBC stated, that the Mirror Group Newspapers has previously admitted phone hacking took place, but says it didn’t in these cases. 

Now, if Harry and the other claimants win, the judge will use it to set the level of damages (amount of money) MGN could pay in other cases from other celebrities. 

According to the BBC, Prine Harry began his witness statement by saying that his decision to move to California with his wife Meghan Markle was "in large part... due to the constant intrusion, inciting of hatred and harassment by the tabloid press into every aspect of our private lives, which had a devastating impact on our mental health and wellbeing. We were also very concerned for the security and safety of our son."

The statement further read: "It is no secret that I have had, and continue to have, a very difficult relationship with the tabloid press in the UK. "In my experience as a member of the Royal Family, each of us gets cast into a specific role by the tabloid press. "You start off as a blank canvas while they work out what kind of person you are and what kind of problems and temptations you might have," as per the BBC.

He added: "They then start to edge you towards playing the role or roles that suit them best and which sells as many newspapers as possible."

"As a teenager and in my early twenties, I ended up feeling as though I was playing up to a lot of the headlines and stereotypes that they wanted to pin on me mainly because I thought that, if they are printing this rubbish about me and people were believing it, I may as well ‘do the crime’, so to speak. It was a downward spiral, whereby the tabloids would constantly try and coax me, a ‘damaged’ young man, into doing something stupid that would make a good story and sell lots of newspapers," BBC quoted his statement as saying.

"Looking back on it now, such behaviour on their part is utterly vile," the Prince added in the statement.