Thai bride wins battle to share ‘secret’ relationship on Facebook
A MARRIED US economist lost a High Court battle against his Thai bride over a Facebook picture she uploaded that he feared would reveal his secret relationship with her.
Harlow Higinbotham, an economic analyst who lives and works in the US, married his first wife in 1991 before meeting Wipaporn Teekhungam in Bangkok in 2001.
He said he loved her, gave her an engagement ring and told her she was the perfect age to bear his children, the judge told the court.
He visited her whenever he was travelling in south-east Asia and, in January 2004, after meeting her parents and paying a dowry, they got “married” at a ceremony in Thailand, although Ms Teekhungam knew he already had a wife.
They had triplets in 2008, who were named after Mr Higinbotham’s family and took his surname. But after the relationship broke down at the end of 2009, child support proceedings began in Thailand and the US. Five years later, Ms Teekhungam created the Facebook profile, which featured a photo of her and Mr Higinbotham with the triplets on their laps.
Even though his other wife knew of their relationship by the time the photo appeared online, he decided to bring a privacy case against Ms Teekhungam at the High Court for misuse of private information, breach of confidence and alleged breaches of the Data Protection Act over her uploading the photograph.
The case was heard in the UK, where Ms Teekhungam is now living, with Winton Perry, her new husband, in Norfolk. Mr Justice Nicklin endorsed an earlier decision that the claim should be struck out, saying it “has been brought, not for any legitimate reason, but as an act of harassment or revenge”.
The judge said that by the time of the online posting, Mr Higinbotham had already told his wife of the relationship and the triplets and the affair was widely known in her circle. Dismissing Mr Higinbotham’s appeal, he said that, objectively judged, the Facebook profile was anodyne and inoffensive, if maybe mischievous.
The judge also discharged an anonymity order granted to Mr Higinbotham in 2016.