1st October, 2019
Meghan Markle, the wife of Britain’s Prince Harry, has filed a claim against the Mail on Sunday newspaper over the publication of a private letter which her husband said showed she had become the latest victim of Britain’s tabloid media.
“Unfortunately, my wife has become one of the latest victims of a British tabloid press that wages campaigns against individuals with no thought to the consequences,” Prince Harry said in a statement.
“My deepest fear is history repeating itself,” Harry wrote. “I’ve seen what happens when someone I love is commoditised to the point that they are no longer treated or seen as a real person. I lost my mother and now I watch my wife falling victim to the same powerful forces.”
At issue was the publication in August 2018 by the Mail on Sunday of a handwritten letter said to be from Meghan to her estranged father, Thomas Markle, a few months after her wedding to Harry in May 2018. Thomas Markle did not attend the wedding, bowing out of the proceedings amid a paparazzi scandal that also involved the Mail on Sunday.
“The contents of a private letter were published unlawfully in an intentionally destructive manner to manipulate you, the reader, and further the divisive agenda of the media group in question,” Harry wrote in the statement.
“In addition to their unlawful publication of this private document, they purposely misled you by strategically omitting select paragraphs, specific sentences, and even singular words to mask the lies they had perpetuated for over a year.”
Spokesman of the law firm Schillings, Meghan’s legal representatives, said in a statement: “We have initiated legal proceedings against the Mail on Sunday, and its parent company Associated Newspapers, over the intrusive and unlawful publication of a private letter written by the Duchess of Sussex, which is part of a campaign by this media group to publish false and deliberately derogatory stories about her, as well as her husband. Given the refusal of Associated Newspapers to resolve this issue satisfactorily, we have issued proceedings to redress this breach of privacy, infringement of copyright and the aforementioned media agenda.”