Rooney wanted to catch leaker in the act
‘Wagatha Christie’ herself gives evidence in High Court libel trial over stories leaked to tabloids
‘The fact The Sun reported all this stuff gave me the anger to put it out to the public ... I was angry. I was fuming’
‘I wanted to catch the account responsible ‘red-handed’, as it were, and so I came up with a plan’
COLEEN ROONEY has said she was left “fuming” when private details of her reconciliation with her husband Wayne were fed to the media, leading her to carry out a sophisticated sting operation which she said identified Rebekah Vardy as the source of the leaks.
Mrs Rooney told the High Court that a now famous social media post in which she accused Mrs Vardy’s Instagram account of being behind a series of leaked stories was her “last resort” as she tried to catch the person responsible “red-handed”.
In what has become the battle royal of the Wags (footballers’ wives and girlfriends), Mrs Vardy, the wife of Leicester City striker Jamie Vardy, is now suing Mrs Rooney for libel over her claims that she planted stories in the press taken from Mrs Rooney’s private Instagram account.
Mrs Rooney said details about a reconciliation with her husband Wayne, the former England and Manchester United player, were leaked to The Sun in 2017. These included facts about her return to the family home she shared with Rooney after spending time at her parents’ house, following a turbulent spell in their marriage.
Although she posted on her public social media accounts a photograph of her and her children in matching pyjamas on the family bed, Mrs Rooney, 36, said details mentioned only on her private account were also leaked. She told the court the “pyjama post” was made when she was “going through a difficult time in my marriage” and had upset her as she felt cornered by the revelations.
“I didn’t know how my marriage was going to work out at the time. Me and Wayne was trying to figure out our relationship, and see how things were going,” she said.
Mrs Rooney said that a photograph of damage to her Honda car after it was scraped by a lorry in Washington DC in January 2019 had also been leaked from her private Instagram account.
These and other leaks led her to set up a sting operation to trap the person responsible, during which Mrs Rooney planted deliberately false stories to see if they were passed on to the press.
Speaking from the witness stand, Mrs Rooney said: “It could have only come from my private Instagram account.
“The fact The Sun reported all this stuff that had happened and was untrue gave me the anger to put it out to the public that someone was giving out my private information. I was angry. I was fuming.”
Mrs Rooney said that after suspecting Mrs Vardy of leaking stories she had published two warning posts and temporarily removed her from her account, “but nothing had worked”.
Describing her plan, Mrs Rooney said in her witness statement: “I wanted to catch the account responsible ‘redhanded’, as it were, and so I came up with a plan.”
She added: “I decided that I would invent and fabricate a story, limit accessibility in such a way so that it was only Becky’s [Mrs Vardy] Instagram account that could view it, upload it to Instagram via Instagram Stories for a period of 24 hours so that it was only ‘seen by’ Becky’s Instagram account and then I would wait and see whether my fabricated, invented story, which had only been seen by Becky’s Instagram account, appeared in The Sun.”
After the sting operation, Mrs Rooney said she was convinced that Mrs Vardy’s account was the origin of the leaks.
In October 2019, she shared the nowviral post in which she accused Mrs Vardy, 40, of leaking “false stories” about her private life to the press.
In the post on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, she wrote: “I have saved and screen-shotted all the original stories which clearly show just one person has viewed them. It’s .......... Rebekah Vardy’s account.”
Mrs Rooney told the court: “What I thought was that Rebekah herself or someone else was doing it and Rebekah knew about it. I was making accusations against her account.”
Mrs Rooney’s evidence came after Mrs Vardy concluded her own evidence yesterday, during which she repeatedly broke down in tears.
At one stage, Mrs Vardy, who denies being the source of leaks or asking her agent to leak material, said she found the process of giving evidence “exhausting and intimidating”, adding: “I feel I have been bullied and manipulated.”
The trial continues.