Prince Harry suffered 'huge bouts of depression and paranoia' and his inner circle shrank due to press intrusion
11 May 2023, 15:25 | Updated: 11 May 2023, 15:53
Prince Harry suffered "huge bouts of depression and paranoia" as a result of press intrusion, a court has been told.
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Prince Harry is among several high-profile figures to bring damages claims against Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) over alleged unlawful information gathering at its titles.
Claims brought by four individuals, one of whom is the duke, are being heard in a seven-week trial - which began on Wednesday - as "representative" cases.
David Sherborne, representing Harry, said in his damages claim against the newspaper group, that the Duke of Sussex had suffered "huge distress".
"He became immediately suspicious of anyone named in stories about him and felt that he could not trust anybody, even at such a young age," he said, referencing his witness statement.
"It also caused great challenges in his relationship with his ex-girlfriend Chelsy Davy, and made him fear for his and her safety."
Read more: Mirror publisher apologises to Prince Harry for ordering the unlawful gathering of information
He continued: "Every time he was in a relationship, or even a rumoured relationship, that whole person’s family, and often their friends, would be 'dragged into the chaos' and find themselves the subject of unlawful activity on the part of MGN.
"There was nowhere that was 'off limits' for MGN’s newspapers, whose journalists would even manage to book into a hotel in Bazaruto, a small island off the coast of Mozambique, when the Duke of Sussex and Ms Davy tried to escape there and enjoy some peace and quiet.
"They were never on their own, which ‘placed a huge amount of unnecessary stress and strain’ on their relationship.
"Ultimately, MGN’s activities led Ms Davy to make the decision that ‘a royal life was not for her’, which was ‘incredibly upsetting’ for the Duke of Sussex at the time.
"They also caused their circle of friends to become smaller and smaller, meaning that friendships were lost entirely unnecessarily, and led to 'huge bouts of depression and paranoia'."
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The High Court in London was later told the alleged hacking of Harry's mobile phone posed a security risk to the royal family.
Mr Sherborne said Harry "experienced unusual telephone and media-related activity which is consistent, now in hindsight but at the time unsuspected, with the unauthorised accessing of his voicemails and other unlawful information gathering".
The barrister said this included missed and hung-up calls "on an almost daily basis from numbers he did not recognise".
He said: "This unlawful activity, including in particular knowing where the Duke of Sussex was going to be at a given time and the widespread dissemination amongst MGN's journalists of private information relating to him, posed a very real and large-scale security risk for the Duke of Sussex, his family and his associates."
MGN has admitted unlawfully gathering information about the Duke but has denied phone hacking.
Lawyers for the publisher said there is "no evidence, or no sufficient evidence, of voicemail interception in any of these four claims".
In court documents released at the start of a trial in London, MGN said it "unreservedly apologises" for instances of unlawful information gathering and added that it "will never be repeated".
