Duchess of Sussex sues tabloid over publication of letter
Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, has filed a lawsuit against The Mail on Sunday and the newspaper’s parent company over the publication of a private letter, her husband, Prince Harry, said Tuesday.
In a statement posted on the duke and duchess’s website, Harry said that Meghan had become a victim of “a ruthless campaign” by British tabloids, and that he had been “a silent witness to her private suffering for too long.”
“There is a human cost to this relentless propaganda, specifically when it is knowingly false and malicious,” he said, “and though we have continued to put on a brave face — as so many of you can relate to — I cannot begin to describe how painful it has been.”
The lawsuit appears to be based on The Mail on Sunday’s publication in February of a handwritten letter Meghan sent to her estranged father, Thomas Markle.
“There comes a point when the only thing to do is to stand up to this behavior, because it destroys people and destroys lives,” Harry said, invoking the history of his mother, Princess Diana, who was followed by paparazzi for years and who died in a car crash in Paris as her driver tried to get away from photographers.
“My deepest fear is history repeating itself,” Harry said. “I’ve seen what happens when someone I love is commoditized 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.”
Calls to DMG Media, the company that owns The Mail on Sunday, were not immediately answered Tuesday.
Harry said that the legal action was “months in the making” and was decided upon after “the contents of a private letter were published unlawfully in an intentionally destructive manner to manipulate you, the reader.”
He accused the publishers of having “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.”
The statement said that the legal action accused The Mail on Sunday and its parent company of misuse of private information, infringement of copyright and violations of the Data Protection Act of 2018. It said the case had been brought to the Chancery Division of the High Court. The statement did not specify damages.