The Duchess’s statement

‘The Mail on Sunday is playing a media game with real lives’

“Associated Newspapers, the owner of The Daily Mail and the Mail on

Sunday, is threatening to publish the names of five women – five private citizens – who made a choice on their own to speak anonymously with a US media outlet more than a year ago, to defend me from the bullying behavior of Britain’s tabloid media. These five women are not

on trial, and nor am I. The publisher of the Mail on Sunday

is the one on trial. It is this publisher that acted unlawfully and is attempting to evade accountability; to create a circus

and distract from the point of this case – that the Mail on Sunday

unlawfully published my private letter. Each of these women is a private citizen, young mother, and each has a

basic right to privacy. Both the Mail on Sunday

and the court system have their names on a confidential schedule but for the Mail on Sunday to expose them in the public domain for no reason other than clickbait and commercial gain is vicious and poses a threat to their emotional and mental well-being. The Mail on Sunday

is playing a media game with real lives. I respectfully ask the court to treat this legal matter with the sensitivity it deserves and to prevent the publisher of the Mail on Sunday

from breaking precedent and abusing the legal process by identifying these anonymous individuals – a privilege that these newspapers in fact rely upon to protect their own unnamed sources.”