MS PATRY HOSKINS: Sir, the first witness this afternoon is
6 Ms Charlotte Church.
7 LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: Very good. Thank you.
8 MS CHARLOTTE MARIA CHURCH (sworn)
9 LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: Please sit down and make yourself as
10 comfortable as you can in the context of this rather
11 unusual environment.
12 A. Okay.
13 LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: First of all, relax.
14 A. Okay.
15 LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: I don't pretend it's necessarily
16 easy, but I'm very grateful to you for volunteering to
17 do this. You've probably heard me say to others that
18 I think it's very important that we hear everybody's
19 perception of what's going on. I know it's difficult
20 because you're talking about things that, by definition,
21 you don't want broadcast around the world, or even
22 anywhere, so I'm grateful to you for coming to do it.
23 Thank you very much.
24 A. My pleasure.
25 MS PATRY HOSKINS: Could you state your full name?
Page 3
1 A. Charlotte Maria Church.
2 MS PATRY HOSKINS: You have provided a witness statement to
3 the Inquiry. Could you confirm that the contents of it
4 are true to the best of your knowledge and belief?
5 A. Yes, again.
6 MS PATRY HOSKINS: If you just wait there, I understand that
7 Mr Sherborne, your barrister, wishes to ask you a few
8 questions.
9 Questions from MR SHERBORNE
10 MR SHERBORNE: Thank you. I think I'm part of the unusual
11 agreement.
12 LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: I'll agree with that, Mr Sherborne.
13 MR SHERBORNE: The chairman described it as an unusual
14 environment. Can I ask you: have you ever given
15 evidence before.
16 A. No, never.
17 Q. So I think the next question that must follow from that
18 is: why have you agreed to come and give evidence to the
19 Inquiry?
20 A. I've agreed to be here today basically because I think
21 that the things that I went through when I was younger
22 were -- when I was quite young, I was a minor -- it was
23 from when I was 12 years old and therefore I kind of
24 wanted to show through my experiences how I think it's
25 imperative that children are protected. Also, after
Page 4
1 becoming a mother myself of two young children, I really
2 want to be able to protect my children in the future as
3 much as possible and their privacy is their right.
4 And also just in terms of my family, who have had to
5 deal with this for years and years, and who are very
6 happy for me to be speaking here at this Inquiry today.
7 Q. Thank you. We've heard from a number of witnesses who
8 have already given evidence about various particularly
9 intrusive practices, such as being doorstepped, stalked
10 or followed wherever they go. Are these practices which
11 are familiar in your experience?
12 A. Absolutely. All of them.
13 Q. I know you're going to be asked some specific questions
14 about that in due course by Ms Patry Hoskins so I'm not
15 going to ask you now, but in general terms, can you just
16 explain what the impact that has on you and your family?
17 A. Well, obviously a massive impact. It infiltrates your
18 everyday life to the point where, even nowadays, when
19 I'm not doing too much, they'll follow we quite
20 regularly wherever I go, whether it be shopping, taking
21 my children to nursery, even though I expressly asked
22 them not to take photographs when I'm with my children
23 at nursery because therefore -- I don't want the
24 nursery -- I don't want people to know where it is,
25 et cetera. But I mean, it's just everywhere. I think
Day 8 PM Leveson Inquiry 28 November 2011
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Page 5
1 there is kind of a shadow network where everybody is
2 infiltrated, in terms of hotel concierge, restaurants
3 who will tip off journalists or paparazzi, the airlines,
4 everywhere -- I haven't been on a holiday since I was 16
5 where I haven't been found and photographed, and much of
6 that, I believe, was bought information because
7 I can't -- if I haven't even been followed to the
8 airport, there have been no paparazzi at the airport,
9 I can't really see how else it could have come about.
10 Q. Those holidays, do they include holidays with your
11 children as well?
12 A. Yes.
13 Q. Finally, we've heard from a number of editors and
14 newspaper representatives that the practices, the
15 culture that we've been hearing about this week, belongs
16 to a bygone era and that things are much better now. In
17 your experience, is that correct?
18 A. No.
19 MR SHERBORNE: I'm sure you'll be asked a lot about it.
20 I'll leave you with that. Thank you very much.
21 A. Thank you.
22 Questions from MS PATRY HOSKINS
23 MS PATRY HOSKINS: Thank you very much. Can I just have one
24 word with the technician. Can we have up, please,
25 document 33122, which is the first page of Ms Church's
Page 6
1 witness statement.
2 LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: It's there.
3 MS PATRY HOSKINS: Oh, is it? I can't see, you see.
4 Let's start with introductions. I'm sure that you
5 need no introduction, but by way of summary, I'm going
6 to read out parts of paragraph 3 of your statement.
7 A. Okay.
8 Q. You started your professional life as a singer when you
9 were just 11 years old and you explain that through
10 numerous TV and radio appearances you became an
11 internationally recognised musical success, going from
12 a typical school girl to a bankable commodity in less
13 than a year.
14 A. Mm-hm.
15 Q. You were marketed by an aggressive record company
16 campaign and you were branded "The voice of an angel"
17 before you were even 12 years old, and you explain that
18 little did you know as a 12-year-old that this
19 description would be used and distorted repeatedly to
20 mock you in catchy tabloid headlines.
21 I'm going to cover a number of issues with you this
22 afternoon, Ms Church. I'm going to deal with them in
23 this order. First I'm going to ask you about press
24 intrusion, then about false and fabricated stories and
25 then I'm going to ask you about the action that you've
Page 7
1 taken against the press in the past.
2 A. Okay.
3 Q. Finally, I'll let you say whatever you want at the end
4 if there's anything that you'd like to add. Let's start
5 with press intrusion into your life, please. I want to
6 start with the early days while you were still a child.
7 You've explained you started life as a singer age
8 11. Did you have media scrutiny right from the start?
9 A. I wouldn't say it was right from the start. There was
10 definitely a massive amount of interest right from the
11 start, which was generally always positive because
12 I didn't have any skeletons or anything when I was 12,
13 et cetera, and they kind of treated me with kid gloves
14 because I was so young. So it wasn't necessarily right
15 from the start. There was a lot of press intrusion in
16 terms of, you know, they were always at my school and
17 things like that, taking photographs of me going to
18 school, but at that time it didn't feel that intrusive,
19 and it was all rather new and exciting and totally
20 different to the life I had previously lived.
21 Q. Yes. When did that start to change then?
22 A. It started to change probably when I was around 14.
23 Q. What changes did you notice?
24 A. Just people were more willing to be negative. It just
25 got a bit more intrusive, really. That's all I can kind
Page 8
1 of categorise it with, but also there was a lot of
2 articles at that time which were not necessarily
3 accurate and a little -- and, you know, just really
4 negative in general.
5 Q. Can I ask you about one particular incident which took
6 place when you were 13 years old. It's at paragraph 7
7 of your statement. I'll read you a couple of lines and
8 if I could ask you then to just explain and elaborate
9 a bit further. You say when you were 13, you were asked
10 to perform at Rupert Murdoch's wedding in New York.
11 When it came to the payment for your work, your
12 management at the time informed you that either there
13 would be a £100,000 fee, which is, you say, the biggest
14 fee you'd ever been offered, or, if the fee for your
15 performance was waived, you would be looked upon
16 favourably by Mr Murdoch's papers.
17 A. Yes.
18 Q. You explain that despite your own reluctance to agree to
19 anything other than the £100,000 fee, you were convinced
20 into taking the latter option?
21 A. That's true.
22 Q. Can I just ask you about this, because
23 News International have denied that this offer was ever
24 made to you at this time. Can you tell the Inquiry as
25 much as you remember about that particular incident?
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Page 9
1 A. Well, I remember being told that Rupert Murdoch had
2 asked me to sing at his wedding to entertain and it
3 would take place on his yacht in New York, and
4 I remember being told that -- you know, the offer of
5 money or the offer of the favour in order to basically
6 get good press, to be looked upon favourably, as I said
7 in the statement, and I also remember being 13 and
8 thinking: "Why on earth would anybody take a favour or
9 £100,000?" and you know, me and my mother being quite
10 resolute on this point, that the £100,000 was definitely
11 the best option, but being advised by management and by
12 certain members of the record company to take the latter
13 option, that he was a very, very powerful man, I was in
14 the early stages of my career and could absolutely do
15 with a favour of this magnitude.
16 Basically, he flew us in on his private jet from LA
17 to New York, which was amazing, and then we went on to
18 his boat, which had a grand piano on it, which I was
19 amazed by, and, yeah, I sang at the ceremony.
20 Q. Can I ask you this: News International say that the fact
21 that you sang at his wedding was in fact a surprise to
22 Rupert Murdoch. It was arranged secretly as a surprise
23 for his wedding.
24 A. Mm-hm.
25 Q. And that therefore he could not possibly have known
Page 10
1 about this alleged deal, this favour. Is there anything
2 you'd like to say about that?
3 A. Well, I had been told by my management that he had
4 specifically asked for me to sing "Pie Jesu", and when
5 I raised to my management the point that "Pie Jesu" was
6 actually a requiem, which is a funeral song and does he
7 really want a funeral song at his wedding, and there had
8 been other the correspondence went back and forth and he
9 said he didn't care whether it was a funeral song, he
10 liked that song and he wanted me to sing it, which
11 I did.
12 Q. So when you are told that he didn't know you were going
13 to sing, that it was a surprise, is that something that
14 accords with your recollection?
15 A. No. Not in the slightest.
16 Q. Okay. Can I ask you to turn now to paragraph 23 of your
17 statement. We're still back sort of in the early days.
18 You explain the intense scrutiny. At the beginning of
19 paragraph 23 you say:
20 "As I went through my teens, the tabloids increased
21 their interest in me, and whether it was smoking, going
22 out, putting on weight, their scrutiny was intense."
23 Then you tell us about a distasteful feature on the
24 Sun website featuring a countdown clock. Can you tell
25 us about that in your own words, please?
Page 11
1 A. Okay, when maybe you think about this, I'd kind of like
2 to remove myself from the situation and maybe for people
3 in this room to think about whether it be their children
4 or their grandchildren and just that -- you know, I was
5 16 and, you know, after seeing this and after my whole
6 family seeing this, just being totally appalled. You
7 know, I was really, really severely uncomfortable with
8 any kind of innuendo like that, you know, let alone from
9 kind of people my own age possibly, but never mind kind
10 of journalists or newspapers as a whole.
11 Q. Can I just go back, just for those of us who don't have
12 the statement necessarily --
13 A. Sorry.
14 Q. -- as to what the feature was about?
15 A. So basically it was on the Sun's website and it was
16 a countdown clock, which -- I can't remember exactly how
17 long it ran for but it ran for, I think, maybe more than
18 a month, a countdown clock to my 16th birthday,
19 basically with it the innuendo of the age of my passing
20 of consent, where basically I could have sex and it was
21 kind of a countdown until that date, which was a little
22 bizarre.
23 Q. Do you remember seeing it at the time?
24 A. I do, I do.
25 Q. How did it make you feel?
Page 12
1 A. Just horrible. You know, I was a 16-year-old girl and
2 I was just really uncomfortable with it in general.
3 Q. I'm going to move on to a period when you were aged
4 between 16 and 20, if I can. Paragraph 24, just the
5 next paragraph from where we were, you say this:
6 "From the ages of 16 to 20, I had to endure the
7 worst excesses of the press."
8 You then set out a number of ways in which the media
9 intruded on your life. At times, you had photographers
10 stationed 24/7 by your door:
11 "On one occasion, my manager found that a reporter
12 had cut holes in a shrub on my property and installed
13 a secret camera near to the entrance to my home so as to
14 track and document my movements."
15 A. Yes.
16 Q. How did you find out about that?
17 A. Basically my manager just came to me and said that he'd
18 found a camera or evidence of a camera, and basically
19 that there was a -- something cut out of the hedge,
20 a little circle cut out of the hedge, and there was
21 really no other person in the world who would kind of do
22 that other than the press. And you know, they'd
23 often -- in previous properties, they'd cut holes in
24 other people's property, in, you know, kind of the
25 shrubbery or the hedges, in order to be able to get the
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Page 13
1 right actual of my house that they wanted. So it had
2 happened before, but not quite so dramatically.
3 Q. Did you ever find out who was responsible for that?
4 A. No.
5 Q. You go on to say:
6 "I've been repeatedly chased in my car and had
7 photographers force open doors to try and photograph me.
8 When attending public events, I had to suffer the
9 indignity of paparazzi trying to take photographs up my
10 skirt and down my top. Photographs of my homes were
11 printed so that the security of my family was
12 compromised."
13 I'll come on to the rest of the paragraph in
14 a moment. You explained to Mr Sherborne earlier how
15 this all made you feel, but can you tell us how
16 regularly was this occurring during this period? Was it
17 every time you went out? Was it occasionally?
18 A. It's difficult to say because at different times there
19 were different levels of interest. If there has been
20 a story that has just come out, then there's a massive
21 level of interest. Obviously I live in Cardiff, I don't
22 live in London, so a lot of photographers would have to
23 travel, although there are a lot of freelance
24 photographers in Cardiff as well. So I mean
25 generally -- generally, from 16 to 18, there was at
Page 14
1 least one photographer there most days, and by "most
2 days", maybe five out of seven days in a week. If there
3 was a story that had just broken or anything like that,
4 then they would literally be there all the time and
5 there would be a lot of them. Maybe, you know, six to
6 eight, possibly. Yeah, so it was -- it was really,
7 really intense.
8 And then of course, when you get to a situation
9 where if you're out in public and they're trying to take
10 photos -- you know, those are really indecent photos
11 that they're trying to get because, you know, at the
12 time it was all the rage to take these photos and expose
13 these celebrities for whatever it might be -- their
14 cellulite, I'm not really sure -- but it was once again
15 just a really unpleasant experience, yeah, and something
16 I hope I don't really have to go through again.
17 Q. Can I ask you about paragraph 256 your statement. We're
18 still in the period between the age of 16 and 20. You
19 explain that when you became pregnant with your first
20 child, the Sun printed an article, which is headlined
21 "Church sober shock", headed as an exclusive. The
22 article reported that you were not drinking or smoking
23 and had put on a bit of weight and that this had caused
24 rumours that you were pregnant.
25 A. Yes.
Page 15
1 Q. You recall that. You say:
2 "At the time of the article, I was in my first
3 trimester, the most sensitive time in a pregnancy and
4 even my parents didn't know I was pregnant."
5 Then you say this in brackets:
6 "The source, never cited, was probably a hacked
7 voicemail message from my doctor or via other
8 surveillance."
9 The question I've been asked to put to you is: do
10 you have any evidence that that information was obtained
11 because your phone was hacked?
12 A. I don't have any particular evidence of that. I have
13 evidence that my phone was hacked, obviously, as a lot
14 of other people giving evidence to this Inquiry do, but
15 I didn't tell anybody. I hadn't told anybody apart from
16 when I'd gone to have my initial scan, so I just --
17 I just can't see that it came from any other area.
18 Q. That's what I was going to ask you. Who knew? You say
19 your parents didn't even know you were pregnant. You
20 knew?
21 A. Yes.
22 Q. Your doctor knew?
23 A. My partner knew.
24 Q. And that's it?
25 A. Yes.
Page 16
1 Q. Do you have any evidence that you may have been subject
2 to surveillance, that the information might have been
3 obtained by surveillance?
4 A. Once again, no evidence, just -- just, you know,
5 probable actions of what were the kind of things that
6 I knew they would -- they were up to at the time.
7 Q. You explain that you explained to the PCC about this
8 article. I'll come back to your experiences with the
9 PCC later on, but you tell us that your complaint was
10 upheld but that given the article had been published,
11 that was no good to you?
12 A. Absolutely. My family --
13 Q. Tell about me bit about that?
14 A. My family were really upset that, you know, I hadn't
15 told them first and it had come out in this way and the
16 one thing I do say in my statement -- I mean, surely
17 it's any woman's right to tell her family or her loved
18 ones, when she feels the time is appropriate, that she's
19 pregnant and it was my news to tell and that opportunity
20 was taken away from me, and luckily, I went on to give
21 birth to a healthy child, but if I would have had any
22 complications, then once again, it would have been
23 something that -- you know, it should have been left to
24 me to have been able to tell people, et cetera. So
25 yeah, the PCC complaint was upheld, but what does that
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Page 17
1 mean? There was a small retraction and I just -- I just
2 didn't think that it could deter any other paper from
3 doing the same in the future.
4 Q. Can I ask you about the small correction that appeared.
5 Can you remember anything about that correction or
6 apology that appeared?
7 A. No.
8 Q. Its prominence or --
9 A. No, I can't remember anything about it.
10 Q. Just for the sake of completeness, I'd like us to look
11 together, please, at what the Sun said about why they
12 had published this article.
13 A. Okay.
14 Q. If you look in your exhibits -- for the sake of the
15 technician it's document 33143 -- you should have it in
16 the little exhibit cc1 after your statement. It should
17 say 33143 at the bottom, or page 8 as well it says. Do
18 you have it?
19 A. Yes.
20 Q. Fantastic. We can see from the top of the page that
21 you're the complainant and the publication you're
22 complaining about is the Sun. You explain that you
23 complained to the Press Complaints Commission about this
24 article, "Baby rumours for sober Church". We can see
25 from the third paragraph down, the one that starts
Page 18
1 "Mr Milton said" -- do you see that?
2 A. Mm-hm.
3 Q. "... that the newspaper had told your PR agent that it
4 had received firm information that you were pregnant.
5 The newspaper was told in response that such information
6 was private and would not be commented on and that they
7 in fact told the newspaper that you were not more than
8 12 weeks pregnant and that no statement would be made
9 until after the 12-week scan, and in spite of this, the
10 newspaper published an article referring to rumours
11 about a pregnancy."
12 A. Mm.
13 Q. Does that confirm your recollection of events?
14 A. Yes, pretty much.
15 Q. Thank you very much.
16 LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: The newspaper's response was that it
17 had merely reported speculation to that effect.
18 MS PATRY HOSKINS: Yes, that's absolutely right. For the
19 sake of completeness, if we look at what the Commission
20 says other the page:
21 "The Commission has recently made clear that
22 newspapers should not reveal the fact of someone's
23 pregnancy before the 12 week scan without consent and
24 when the information is not known to any significant
25 degree. The newspaper's defence in this case was that
Page 19
1 it had merely reported rumours that the complaint was
2 pregnant because of a change in her behaviour, but the
3 newspaper had provided no evidence of any rumours and
4 had not denied that it had known for a fact that she was
5 pregnant when it published the piece. In these
6 circumstances, it seemed to the Commission that the
7 newspaper had simply tried to circumvent the privacy
8 provisions of the code by representing the story as
9 speculation. This was not acceptable within the spirit
10 of the code. The complaint was unheld."
11 So we'll see, sir, that the PCC took a view as to
12 what the newspaper was in fact saying.
13 LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: Yes.
14 MS PATRY HOSKINS: Still on the subject of press intrusion,
15 please, Ms Church, I'd like to come back to press
16 intrusion which you considered put your life at risk.
17 In that respect, let's look back at paragraph 24, which
18 I said I'd come back to. The second half of paragraph
19 24.
20 This is the incident where photographs of your house
21 were printed and also, on one occasion, a threat to
22 kidnap you was published in the News of the World. Can
23 you just tell us a bit about that?
24 A. A lot of this -- a lot of this information kind of about
25 any kind of kidnap stuff or really, really obsessive
Page 20
1 fans was kind of kept from me in order to try and
2 protect me and my sanity, but the News of the World
3 deemed it acceptable to publish that there was a kidnap
4 plot and when I became aware of this story, asked the
5 publication not to print in any terms where I lived. It
6 was quite well-known that I lived in Cardiff but, you
7 know, due to the recent threats, not to publish where
8 I lived, but they did, and -- I can't remember exactly
9 what it said, but it was basically: "She lives in
10 Pontcanna, round the corner from her parents' hotel", or
11 words to that effect. It was really quite exact.
12 MS PATRY HOSKINS: Sir, those documents are in exhibit cc2
13 but they will not be published on the website for
14 obvious reasons.
15 LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: No.
16 MS PATRY HOSKINS: If you wanted to see the exact words
17 used, you can see them there.
18 Thank you very much. Can I ask you now, still on
19 press intrusion, about the impact on others, and in this
20 respect I'd like us to look at paragraphs 26 onwards of
21 this statement. You preface these paragraphs by saying
22 this:
23 "Whilst the coverage about me could be hurtful, it
24 has been the coverage about my parents that has been
25 particularly painful to deal with. The events I am
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Page 21
1 about to describe include: blackmail, bribery, phone
2 interception, innuendo and most importantly, the
3 invasion of the privacy of private, non-public people.
4 To my mind, it reveals the tabloids at their very
5 worst."
6 Then you refer to an article dated 11 December 2005
7 in the News of the World which reported that your father
8 was having an affair. Again, I'm not going to put those
9 documents back in the public domain by publishing them
10 on the website, but can you tell us a bit about that
11 particular article?
12 A. Absolutely. On 11 December, as you said, the
13 News of the World reported that my father was having an
14 affair.
15 Q. Can I pause there. Had you received any prior
16 notification that that article was going to be
17 published?
18 A. Yes.
19 Q. Okay.
20 A. Yes. I'm not sure whether it was -- we were given
21 knowledge of this article being published because -- to
22 comment on it or just -- I'm not really sure how it came
23 about, and I don't know if they were even asked for
24 their comment, I'm just not sure. But yeah, it was
25 11 December and the News of the World reported my father
Page 22
1 was having an affair, which he was, and the article --
2 the front page headline was:
3 "Church's three in a bed cocaine shock."
4 With my picture beside it, which -- obviously, if
5 you hadn't bought the publication and read the entire
6 story, you could have made your own assumptions, which
7 would have been entirely wrong.
8 Q. Ie that it was you?
9 A. Yes, and the first line of the article which -- after
10 going back to a lot of the articles, actually, that
11 I put into this bundle, I think maybe I've just kind of
12 blanked out just quite how bad they were but I just want
13 to read out the first line of the article, which was:
14 "Superstar Charlotte Church's mum tried to kill
15 herself because her husband is a love rat hooked on
16 cocaine and three-in-a-bed orgies."
17 You can imagine what followed it, in true
18 News of the World style. It was basically just totally
19 sensationalised, and whether partially or wholly true,
20 I just really hated the fact that my parents, who had
21 never been in this industry apart from in looking after
22 me, were being exposed and vilified in this fashion. It
23 was just had a massive, massive impact on my family
24 life, on my mother's health, which the News of the World
25 had reported on before then, on her mental health state
Page 23
1 and her hospital treatment, which we also think the only
2 way they could have known about that hospital treatment,
3 et cetera, was either through the hacking or possibly
4 through the bribing of hospital staff, et cetera. So
5 they knew how vulnerable she was and still printed this
6 story, which was horrific. And I just -- I can't think
7 of any justification for printing a story like that.
8 Q. That was going to be my question. Perhaps the answer to
9 it is obvious, but can you see any public interest in
10 publishing a story about the fact that your father, not
11 you, had had an affair?
12 A. I see no interest -- no public interest at all that it
13 serves, other than to sell papers.
14 Q. Okay. Can I unpick what you said after that about your
15 mother's health? You say in your statement your
16 mother's a vulnerable person. Shortly before the
17 publication of this story, she'd actually been admitted
18 to hospital after an attempted suicide. This was in
19 part due to the fact, you say, that she was aware that
20 this story was coming out?
21 A. Yes, at least in part. Just because, as I go on later
22 to say, it's totally different -- you know, the way that
23 a lot of newspapers explain this type of behaviour is
24 that, you know: well, the truth should out and the
25 family have a right to know. Well, yes, possibly the
Page 24
1 family have a right to know, but you know, everybody
2 else doesn't have a right to know and lots of couples
3 have to deal with situations like this between
4 themselves, as ordinary normal people do, but having to
5 deal with it on this scale, with your -- in terms of my
6 mother, with her mother and father, her elderly mother
7 and father having to go through all of this, my nana
8 having to go to church on a Sunday and listen to
9 people's comments, et cetera, is just unacceptable.
10 Q. What was the impact of that whole story on you?
11 A. The story had a massive impact on me, obviously nowhere
12 near as much as the impact on my mother, but it's
13 totally unnatural for a daughter to know that about
14 their parents, and -- yeah, it had a massive
15 psychological effect on me, which -- you know, obviously
16 we've all managed to come through it because there is --
17 you know, there's really no other option. It's not like
18 you can go to the PCC and kind of have something there
19 or get something back or -- you know, so you've just got
20 to get on with it, really.
21 Q. Before we leave the topic of press intrusion, let me ask
22 you about some of the common arguments that you hear
23 rehearsed, what I call the whingeing celebrity
24 arguments. First of all, can I start from this point:
25 do you accept that someone who is in the public eye, who
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Page 25
1 is famous, will necessarily attract a certain level of
2 media interest?
3 A. Yes, I totally accept that.
4 Q. It's been said -- and you agree, you accept this in your
5 statement -- that you yourself have, on occasion, gone
6 to speak to magazines such as Hello and OK and received
7 a fee presumably for those interviews.
8 A. Mm-hm.
9 Q. Does that, in your view, the fact that you've done that,
10 mean that you deserve a higher level of media interest?
11 A. Categorically no, but then also to expand upon that
12 point is that -- I think -- I wrote some little bits of
13 points down. Basically, there is no rule book for
14 dealing with the tabloid press and I tried lots of
15 different approaches of how to deal with it. Sometimes
16 I've not given interviews, hidden myself away at home,
17 even done my food shopping on the Internet so as not to
18 go out and be photographed and be written about, and
19 generally the way that that was counteracted was by --
20 that they made up stories and used old photographs.
21 So with OK and Hello, I tried something different,
22 to see whether that would work, because they were
23 obviously insatiable for information and new photos,
24 et cetera, but I think -- I think those particular
25 articles need to be seen in context with what I was
Page 26
1 going through at the time. So basically, I was pregnant
2 with my first child. I was having a home birth. Whilst
3 I'm giving birth to my first child at my house, I'm well
4 aware that there are six photographers outside my house
5 who are waiting, waiting for those first pictures, and
6 by signing an exclusive deal, I took the value of those
7 paparazzi pictures away.
8 At this point, I'd lived with the paparazzi for
9 a while. I knew the tactics they used. I knew it
10 wasn't always safe. I knew there were car chases,
11 et cetera, involved, especially because there's a large
12 number of them, therefore they're all fighting for which
13 one gets its first and the best picture, and I didn't
14 want to subject my tiny newborn children to that.
15 There's also something to be said where they do take
16 nice photos and they actually print what you say, which
17 I haven't found in a lot of tabloid interviews and
18 things that I've done, or whether they've been
19 interviews or not, and basically my decision was based
20 upon the fact that photographs of my children would have
21 been taken anyway, with or without my consent, and this
22 was the lesser of two evils. So basically it's kind of
23 a no-win situation.
24 I'd also like it to be noted that any money that
25 I earned from those type of things I gave to charity.
Page 27
1 Q. Another myth is that you need the press as much as they
2 need you. In that respect, look at paragraph 6 of your
3 statement, where you say this:
4 "It's often argued that as someone in the public
5 eye, I need the media and that intrusions into my
6 private life and the negative coverage are and always
7 have been a fair trade off for success, that I need the
8 press just as much as they need me. However, I cannot
9 see how this is actually the case."
10 And you say as a singer, a newspaper in particular
11 is a very bad medium for promoting my work. Why is it
12 a very bad medium?
13 A. Well, when I was a young girl especially, basically it
14 was kind of a commodity. It was that I was this really
15 small girl with this big operatic voice and therefore
16 you kind of needed to see it. You know, it was quite
17 a visual and audio thing at the same time, which
18 obviously a newspaper cannot give. So I think at the
19 very start of my career, and generally as a singer or a
20 musician, it's not that much of a great medium for your
21 work. TV and radio are much more important. As a TV
22 presenter, definitely you need the press more than -- as
23 a musician. You know, they definitely do aid people and
24 encourage people to watch your shows when they're on, et
25 cetera, so ...
Page 28
1 Q. I understand. You then say, same paragraph:
2 "I have interacted with the media on a number of
3 occasions, as is required of any signed recording
4 artist."
5 Can I ask you a bit about that?
6 A. It's not even necessarily just a signed recording
7 artist. If you have a new show on television, if you
8 have a book or, you know, kind of whatever, generally
9 it's -- you're signed to a company, whether it be a book
10 company or TV company, and therefore you are
11 contractually obliged to promote that product. So maybe
12 a lot of the decisions that were made by the promotion
13 staff, whether in the record company at the time or the
14 TV company, wouldn't have been the publications I would
15 have necessarily gone for but you have a contractual
16 obligation.
17 Q. I understand. So in a nutshell, you've interacted with
18 the press on a number of occasions because you were
19 obliged to do so?
20 A. I was obliged to do so and also because I didn't really
21 have any formal training from when I was 12, and
22 generally whenever asked a question, just told the
23 truth, and sometimes, you know, you get yourself into
24 a conversation with a journalist and you just tell the
25 truth and I kind of started to -- journalists started to
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Page 29
1 know that you can ask her anything and she's going to
2 let you know. She's not going to kind of hide or --
3 hopefully, I haven't been hypocritical ever. So I do
4 think that that has -- that has, you know, throughout
5 my -- throughout my life been something, that I may have
6 been too honest in interviews and therefore they felt
7 that they had more of a claim on me. But then also,
8 because it was since I was 12 and everybody felt like
9 they'd grown up with me, maybe they felt that they had
10 some sort of ownership.
11 Q. I said I'd move on after press intrusion to phone
12 hacking and other unlawful means. In that respect, look
13 at paragraph 28 of your statement to remind yourself of
14 what you said in that respect. You say it's been
15 revealed to you that the police have substantial
16 information demonstrating that your phone messages and
17 those close to you were intercepted and monitored by
18 Glenn Mulcaire, who you understand was contracted to
19 News of the World.
20 When did you first find out that your phone may have
21 been hacked?
22 A. Crikey. I can't -- I can't remember. Earlier this
23 year.
24 Q. How did you find out?
25 A. I'm sorry, I'm not doing very well on this point.
Page 30
1 Q. Don't worry.
2 A. How did we find out? I think we were contacted by the
3 police. Yeah, we were contacted by the police, who
4 showed us all of the photocopied notes of
5 Glenn Mulcaire's notebook, which in turn had passwords
6 and PIN numbers and phone numbers of lots of people in
7 my life, my mother and my father, me, their friends, my
8 friends, old boyfriends' numbers. Yeah, it was quite
9 substantial.
10 Q. I understand. You say the information you've seen
11 relates to 2003, 2005 and 2006. You refer to the things
12 that you've just had -- names, numbers, notes,
13 addresses, PIN numbers and so on -- and you say that the
14 earliest information revealed you were hacked when you
15 were just 17.
16 A. Yes.
17 Q. How did you feel when you found out that you'd been the
18 subject of phone hacking?
19 A. I mean, even though we, as a family, felt that the press
20 had always used some dreadful tactics in order to get
21 a story, it was still -- it was still quite bemusing,
22 and especially that -- when I was younger, I remember
23 having a big group of girlfriends and the more and more
24 that was leaked that I just thought: "I don't understand
25 how this is getting out", the more I kind of cut people
Page 31
1 out of my life simply as to reduce the amount of people
2 that I spent time with, to hopefully not have quite so
3 many leaks, and so then to find out that, you know, they
4 were hacked and you'd accused these people -- you know,
5 you're left with a feeling of guilt then, which
6 I just -- you know, it wasn't my fault, but for accusing
7 those people who are closest to you. When I first gave
8 birth to my daughter, Ruby, I wanted to keep it secret
9 for about a week just so I could have some time with my
10 newborn baby, and it was in the papers within about two
11 days. You know, her time of birth, her place of birth,
12 her name, and I remember saying to my mum, you know: "It
13 must be you, it must be one of our family", and her
14 being really upset and in turn going to all of our
15 family and having big arguments, et cetera, when in fact
16 that could have entirely been down to hacking as well.
17 So, yeah, it's been a little bit confusing at that
18 time times.
19 Q. I understand. This is not the only experience you've
20 had of being contacted by the police and by Scotland
21 Yard in relation to private detectives. You tell us in
22 paragraph 29 that the when you were 19 you were
23 contacted by the police in relation to
24 Operation Motorman.
25 A. Yes.
Page 32
1 Q. Do you remember much about that?
2 A. I do, actually. I remember being in my mother's house,
3 because she said she'd been contacted by them and
4 I should come over, and they brought a massive, massive
5 black book, which was just full of information, and
6 it -- there seemed to be much more information in the
7 stuff that I saw when I was 19 than kind of
8 Glenn Mulcaire's notes, et cetera. It was
9 comprehensive. They just had everything.
10 Q. Information about you?
11 A. Yeah, information about me, information about my
12 friends, family members, criminal records, DVLA records,
13 you know, mobile numbers and house numbers and just all
14 sorts. I was just -- we were just completely taken
15 aback, to be honest.
16 Q. You say in your statement this: that one of the pieces
17 of information that book contained was transcripts of
18 telephone calls. Are you sure about that?
19 A. This is -- this is something that my dad seemed to
20 recall more so. I just remember there just being
21 a massive amount of information. I couldn't swear to
22 that there was definitely transcripts of telephone
23 calls. I remember there being something to do with like
24 live interception phone calls, but what is memory?
25 Flawed.
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Page 33
1 Q. Fair enough. You go on to say in the next paragraph
2 that both the phone hacking and Operation Motorman
3 material also contained information about previous
4 boyfriends of yours and you explain that you've been
5 unable to experience the highs and lows of relationships
6 like any normal person without unwanted attention and it
7 seems illegal surveillance. Can you tell us a bit more
8 about that?
9 A. Well, basically a lot of their telephone numbers were on
10 the Glenn Mulcaire notes, so I should imagine -- it's
11 hard to know the extent of it because you just don't
12 know, looking back. But yeah -- I mean, basically there
13 was always paparazzi around, there was always
14 journalists about in the places that we go, trying to
15 speak to my friends, offer friends -- or if not friends,
16 then at least people on the outer circle of the people
17 that you know -- money in order to talk or give a quote
18 or what not.
19 And yeah, basically my first boyfriend sold a story
20 on me when I was 17 and that was pretty dreadful, and
21 I just remember thinking: "Why is it okay that an editor
22 or somebody senior in a newspaper could pay an employed
23 boy from Cardiff tens of thousands of pounds to reveal
24 intimate sexual details about another 17-year-old girl?"
25 I just couldn't quite get my head around that.
Page 34
1 It happened again when I was 19, a pretty much
2 similar case. Yeah, but to me that again just made me
3 think of my grandmother having to just -- it's just
4 stuff that you shouldn't know about your other family
5 members and you unfortunately are exposed to.
6 Q. I'm now going to turn to false and fabricated stories,
7 if I can. I know that you've given us a large number of
8 examples of these in your statement, but let's pick some
9 out, if I with can. First of all, I'm going to look at
10 paragraph 31 and the coverage of the occasion when you
11 went on holiday in June 2004 with five of your friends
12 to celebrate your 18th birthday.
13 A. Okay.
14 Q. I'm sure you remember that.
15 A. Yes.
16 Q. For the technician, the document number is 33145:
17 "The Daily Mail's double spread read 'Vice of an
18 angel' and set out a detailed, disparaging and distorted
19 account of our movements and behaviour."
20 Can you tell us about the article?
21 A. The article, I think, was the one that like literally
22 named every single one of my girlfriends, their
23 occupations, their age, and then, as you said, went on
24 to just give the most ridiculous account of what had
25 apparently happened, which was -- it was nowhere near
Page 35
1 that interesting or debauched, and we were just a couple
2 of 18-year-old girls on our first girls' holiday. And
3 also actually, at this time we were staying in a private
4 villa at which there were paparazzi photographs taken of
5 all of us and a lot of the girls were not happy about
6 that at all.
7 And also, one of the worst things about this article
8 was that it said that us as a group had apparently
9 nicknamed one of my friends and it was a pun on a name
10 that crudely made fun of their weight, and I've never
11 spoken about this girl in this way and I've never heard
12 anybody else speak about her in this way, until, it
13 seems, the journalist made up this cruel nickname about
14 a 17-year-old girl and deemed that to be acceptable.
15 Q. It was just untrue?
16 A. Mm-hm.
17 Q. I've been asked to ask you whether you complained at the
18 time to the PCC?
19 A. Looking back at my complaints to the PCC, what's
20 actually stood out to me is how kind of sporadic they
21 are, and also about much lesser stories than stories
22 that stick in my mind as being really, really important
23 or really dreadful, and I think that's mainly because
24 throughout the whole time, you just -- you know,
25 whatever the PCC ruling is is kind of inconsequential.
Page 36
1 The damage is already done, there are no real
2 repercussions and it just doesn't -- it just doesn't
3 help. And so a lot of the time -- well, most of the
4 time, I just didn't bother. It incurs legal costs and
5 I just didn't bother.
6 There's obviously -- I think just the sporadic
7 nature of them is obviously when I'd just had enough --
8 it might have been even just a small story or something
9 that was slightly inaccurate and I'd just had enough and
10 so therefore gone to the PCC to make a point, but in
11 general I think that explains why they're quite so
12 sporadic.
13 Q. So you didn't complain about this particular occasion?
14 A. I don't think so.
15 Q. You've explained to us why. Did you even complain to
16 the Daily Mail or contact them? Do you remember?
17 A. I should imagine. I mean, there was always -- there's
18 always a two and fro of you can't -- you know: "You
19 can't print this", or: "This is totally wrong", but --
20 between, you know, kind of the publicist -- I never
21 personally contact the journalists, although a lot of
22 the times I wanted to but I was always told not to, you
23 know, by -- whether it be my management or whether it be
24 the record company, because there was a kind of -- there
25 was a thing that, you know: "Say nothing is best. Say
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Page 37
1 nothing is best. This is the way it is. You're just
2 going to have to shut up and put up. This is the way it
3 is."
4 Q. The second example I'd like to pick out is the New York
5 story, if I can put it that way. If you turn back to
6 paragraph 20 of your statement, I'll introduce the story
7 for you. You say that one of the most professionally
8 damaging articles published about you was not by
9 a tabloid but by the Times. It's been pointed out to me
10 that it may have been the Sunday Times. Is that right?
11 A. Possibly.
12 Q. The article concerned the 9/11 terrorist atrocity. You
13 were 14 at the time and spending a great deal of time in
14 New York. Although you were only a young girl, you were
15 horrified and shaken by events that occurred that day.
16 Can you tell us a bit about how you came to have that
17 article published in the Sunday Times?
18 A. Looking back, I was actually 15 when I referenced the
19 article. I'd literally just flown back from New York.
20 The record company had set up an interview for me which
21 was general -- that was quite normal -- and I'd been out
22 in New York for a while and my manager, John Vernile,
23 who is sat here in the courtroom today -- you know, we
24 did a lot of -- he organised for me to go to a lot of
25 the benefits and the commemorations and we went down to
Page 38
1 Ground Zero and lots of the fire stations and because of
2 my recent experiences then and because it had just
3 happened, then Jasper Gerrard asked me a lot of
4 questions about it.
5 I felt at the time that the interview was going
6 really well. He was asking me really like intelligent
7 questions and I was used to being asked what my
8 favourite colour was still and how did my teenage
9 friends deal with my fame and things like this, and it
10 just felt totally different and new. And you know,
11 I answered all of his questions and when I eventually
12 saw the piece, I was just totally shell-shocked, and --
13 because nobody had sat in on the interview with me,
14 which is what generally would have happened, and
15 therefore nobody was taping it from our side, and so
16 I had kind of -- you know, like the Sony people and
17 everybody kind of saying, you know: "Have you said this?
18 What's going on?" And I basically had to defend myself
19 for ages about the fact that I hadn't said these
20 horrific things and never would have said these horrific
21 things.
22 Q. What were you alleged to have said?
23 A. I was alleged to have said -- sorry, I'll read, if
24 that's okay?
25 Q. Of course?
Page 39
1 A. "One of the most denigrating claims was the comment
2 I supposedly made about the celebrity of some of the
3 9/11 firefighters. The comment I had actually made was
4 not disparaging of them. It was quite the reverse.
5 I recall referring to their appearance at the British
6 Television Awards and explaining that I thought it was
7 in bad taste for the television producers to demean the
8 firefighters' heroism by making them present the award
9 for best soap. However, this was dressed up as me
10 believing that these men did not deserve their
11 recognition and had only been doing their job."
12 So it was a lot of things like that. And as I also
13 say here, we asked for the tape of the interview and the
14 Times refused to release it. In any event, I was only
15 15 years old, sorry, and to be exposed by a newspaper of
16 this type to ridicule and derision upon such a sensitive
17 subject was a terrible experience, and that article then
18 went over to the New York Post, which was also owned by
19 Mr Murdoch's company, and the headline was "Voice of an
20 angel spews venom".
21 And of course, because of the massively sensitive
22 nature of this subject, there was just a massive
23 backlash against me in America, where the record company
24 deemed it necessary to hire police guards, and I was
25 getting abuse if I was walking around in the streets
Page 40
1 where people, you know, had truly believed that I had
2 said these kind of things, and it was just not a very
3 nice experience, once again.
4 Q. Can I come to a third example, a much more recent
5 example, if I can, of a false story. It's paragraph 14
6 of your statement, please, and it's an article in The
7 People. For the technician, the article is at
8 page 33136. I'll let you explain what this article was
9 about in your own words.
10 A. Okay. So this article basically said that I was out at
11 a pub in Cardiff with my partner and we were both
12 inebriated and I was singing "Be my baby", apparently,
13 to which afterwards I apparently slumped into a chair
14 and said, "That was for you, baby. Will you be my baby?
15 Will you marry me?" To which he apparently replied,
16 "Yes, but I don't want to become Mr Church." That was
17 the article.
18 Q. Can you pause there? Can we just turn to the next page?
19 It's 33137. Then we'll see the actual People article.
20 We see there's a photograph, a photograph of you. It
21 looks like you're singing karaoke.
22 A. It does.
23 Q. First of all, is any of this story true?
24 A. Not one shred.
25 Q. But they have a photograph of you?
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Page 41
1 A. The photograph is from 2007, when I was doing a radio
2 show with Chris Moyles. It was a Christmas radio show
3 and because at that time my parents owned that pub, then
4 he decided it would be a cool thing to do it from the
5 pub, and so it was a massively out of date photo.
6 Q. So not taken that night?
7 A. No, surprisingly.
8 Q. Did The People check with you before printing this
9 article whether it was true or not?
10 A. No. They phoned my publicist very late on the Friday
11 and didn't say -- I think it was just a freelance
12 journalist and just said, "What is the nature of
13 Charlotte's relationship with her partner?" of which my
14 publicist, generally, unless they would kind of state
15 where they were from, who they were writing it for, what
16 the article was about, would just generally not answer.
17 So they did call at the last minute, but it was with --
18 you know, they didn't really give much away and
19 therefore neither did we.
20 Q. I'll come back to what you did in relation to the
21 article in a moment, but you say this in paragraph 40:
22 "Within 36 hours of them reporting this tale, it was
23 picked up by 70 outlets around the world and presented
24 as fact."
25 A. Yes.
Page 42
1 Q. Is that something that you recognise from other
2 articles?
3 A. Absolutely. That's just generally the way it goes. It
4 just kind of blows up. Everybody -- the main thing
5 about this whole Inquiry, I think, is that everybody --
6 everybody really believes that there are a set of proper
7 rules and regulations that are adhered to, and therefore
8 these things are really true and they couldn't be
9 printed if they weren't true, and that is just
10 generally, a lot of the time, just not the case, in my
11 experience, anyway. So yes, it was picked up by 70
12 different outlets. It was also embellished upon, so it
13 went from this to the fact that I couldn't remember
14 proposing because I had been so drunk. So the story
15 just got expanded upon, bloggers wrote about it, people
16 believed it, and now we're left with the debris of
17 trying to make this story go away because it was never,
18 in fact, true.
19 Q. Let me ask you: when you saw this article and realised
20 that it had been published and it was actually false,
21 what did you do?
22 A. I gave a statement saying that it was a complete
23 fabrication and that this was a case -- you know, this
24 was an exact reason why this Leveson Inquiry is
25 happening and how it's out of control and it simply
Page 43
1 shouldn't be allowed to happen, and part of my statement
2 which was basically the denial was printed in a few
3 publications. Most of -- most of the rest of it, the
4 stronger parts of the statement, were just totally
5 ignored and in one instance -- I think it might have
6 been the Press Association who basically wrote back when
7 we'd given the statement, saying, "We can't print this
8 whole statement because our consumers don't like to hear
9 anything negative about us or our conduct."
10 Q. Okay. Did you contact the newspaper itself?
11 A. Yeah, we contacted the newspaper itself just is to say
12 this is totally untrue and therefore -- and it's also
13 defamatory, and those are ongoing legal procedures.
14 Q. Okay. We were passed this morning a document from the
15 newspaper itself which indicates that The People have
16 actually now published a correction and apology in
17 relation to that story. That was at page 2 of
18 yesterday's edition of The People. I'll pass you
19 a copy, sir.
20 LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: Have you seen this?
21 A. I have seen it. I also saw the legal letter that went
22 to them before this which said that we didn't just want
23 a normal run-of-the-mill apology because it's just not
24 good enough, but I don't really know the ins and outs of
25 it. My lawyers know much more about the ins and outs of
Page 44
1 what's going on with it.
2 MR SHERBORNE: Sorry, being one of those lawyers, I don't
3 know whether it's helpful -- given that there's
4 a statement in effect from the newspaper pointing out
5 that they published a unilateral apology yesterday,
6 I don't know whether it's helpful to put that in
7 context?
8 LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: No, I don't think it probably is. If
9 it's appropriate, then statements can be put in writing
10 about it.
11 MR SHERBORNE: I understand. What Ms Church was saying,
12 though, was that with the apology -- and it was a
13 unilateral one, and that's obviously a matter that's of
14 wider interest to the Inquiry in terms of what the
15 appropriate form of redress is -- the apology she was
16 seeking in agreed terms was also the answers to a number
17 of questions which are rather similar to those questions
18 Ms Patry Hoskins had put about how it was this story was
19 written and how there are quotes from Ms Church and her
20 partner, given that this is all entirely fabricated.
21 LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: All right. Just read out what the
22 People say.
23 MS PATRY HOSKINS: Yes, of course I will. The apology reads
24 as follows:
25 "Charlotte Church [and there's a small photograph].
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Page 45
1 On November 6 2011, we said Charlotte Church had
2 proposed marriage to Jonathan Powell at a boozy karaoke
3 night at Robin Hood pub in Cardiff. We were
4 misinformed. On the night in question, Ms Church and
5 Mr Powell were performing a gig at studios in Cardiff
6 and Ms Church did not propose that night or at all. We
7 are happy to set the record straight and we apologise
8 for our mistake."
9 LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: So you weren't in the place at all?
10 A. No. I wasn't anywhere near there. I was doing a gig
11 with a large public audience somewhere totally
12 different.
13 LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: All right.
14 MS PATRY HOSKINS: You obviously took legal action in that
15 respect and that takes us on to what you say about why
16 you don't always take action. You've told us why you
17 don't always go to the PCC, but can you tell us about
18 why you've taken the view that you can't always just
19 resort to lawyers when you see an article published
20 about you?
21 A. Well, first of all, if you challenge -- I've always --
22 well, I used to always be of the view that if you
23 challenge these individual tabloid papers, then there
24 would somehow be some bad feeling and I've always been
25 led to believe that to be true. So there would be like
Page 46
1 a residual bad feeling, which in turn would create more
2 stories possibly, more negative stories, and it's also
3 a massive financial commitment --
4 Q. It's paragraph 15 of your statement, if you want to look
5 back at that.
6 A. Yeah, sorry. Yeah, there's a massive financial
7 implication and if it is a defamation claim and it's
8 resisted, then your costs will be ten or 20 times what
9 the initial costs would be, which would be maybe around
10 £5,000 or £10,000, just to put in an initial complaint.
11 Generally, you may not even recover all of your costs
12 and the damage is done. Once it's in print, it's done.
13 It's been disseminated all over the Internet to all the
14 other publications, so it just feels a little pointless.
15 Q. Thank you. You've told us a bit about the PCC and your
16 experiences with that. Would you consider it again in
17 the future? Is that something that you think gives you
18 an adequate remedy when an article like this is
19 published?
20 A. No.
21 Q. Why not?
22 A. Because -- because it's just totally inadequate for --
23 there is a massive problem to deal with and they just
24 don't deal with the problems. They don't deal with it
25 at all.
Page 47
1 Q. Thank you. This isn't a compulsory question, I say, to
2 quote the chairman, but is there any particular changes
3 to the way that the press is regulated that you would
4 consider would be appropriate?
5 A. The only thing that I really want to get across from
6 giving my statement is that, as I said, all of this --
7 well, a lot of this happened to me whilst I was a minor
8 and whilst I was really very young, and it was really
9 hard and it has had a psychological effect upon me, kind
10 of -- it almost feels like they put you through this
11 psychological grinding, test your strength and you come
12 out the other side and it just keeps happening, and
13 I just -- I would hate to the see that happen to any
14 other child who is in my position, who was talented or
15 sporty or whatever it may be, and as I said, I want to
16 make sure that my children are protected. So that's the
17 main reason why I'm here. In terms of recommendations,
18 I haven't got a clue.
19 Q. Okay. There's two finally things. One is I know you
20 recently heard a speech that Paul Dacre gave to the
21 Royal Society of Editors and there's something you
22 wanted to say about that?
23 A. Yes, it struck me -- and I don't want to single out
24 Paul Dacre at all, but it was generally just in terms of
25 editors and people who are high up in these tabloid
Page 48
1 papers, that he said in his speech to -- I think it was
2 the Editors' Committee --
3 Q. Royal Society.
4 A. And in his speech he said that there were many
5 journalists who were exposing the misdeeds of the rich,
6 the powerful and the pompous, and it just struck me that
7 Mr Dacre himself, and possibly other editors, et cetera,
8 are probably rich, definitely powerful -- I'm not sure
9 about pompous, but if they were subject to the
10 investigative journalism that they subject others to,
11 maybe they would come out whiter as white but if they
12 weren't, and they had misdeeds to be spoken of, then
13 surely their misdeeds are much more within the public
14 interest, being very powerful men in these massive media
15 organisations, than that of me as a TV presenter/singer
16 or my parents or my friends or what not, and that just
17 kind of struck me, so I just wanted to make that point.
18 Q. I understand. The last thing I wanted to ask you was to
19 consider the cumulative effect of all of this. You've
20 told us about the constant press intrusion, the press
21 intrusion when you were a young child right through to
22 the present day. You've told us about the cameras in
23 the bushes. You've told us about the entirely false
24 article, the articles that possibly put your life in
25 danger, the articles about your parents. How has all
Day 8 PM Leveson Inquiry 28 November 2011
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13 (Pages 49 to 52)
Page 49
1 this impacted on you? How do you feel about it now?
2 A. Um ... I feel -- I feel strangely strong because I have
3 survived it all and I'm not really sure how. I really
4 don't know how because at times had has been -- just
5 really, really messes with your mind, and especially
6 because I was growing and I was only just forming
7 opinions and learning how to live and trying to learn
8 what a normal life was, if there is such a thing. So in
9 a way, I think it's made me stronger, but professionally
10 I definitely think that because I have been made
11 a caricature for so long -- and actually, this person
12 that I'm portrayed as in the tabloid papers really isn't
13 me, really isn't the person that I am, the way I live my
14 life, the things I say, the things that I believe. It's
15 just not the person that I am, and I think that that has
16 had a massive impact on my career. I think I -- as an
17 artist, as a singer, as a musician, I find it really
18 difficult to be taken seriously because my credibility
19 has just been blown to bits with these stories that have
20 just been going on for years and years, and the
21 cumulative effect of that has been that I find it really
22 difficult to be taken seriously.
23 Q. Is there anything that you wanted to say about the
24 impact or perhaps the future impact on your children?
25 A. Well, yeah, as I've explained, my main reason for being
Page 50
1 here is to be here for my children. If, for any reason,
2 I'm still in the public eye by the time that they're
3 grown up, I really hope that they won't be subject to
4 what I was.
5 MS PATRY HOSKINS: Ms Church, those are my questions.
6 Unless there was something that you wanted to add that
7 you feel we have not covered --
8 A. I don't think so.
9 MS PATRY HOSKINS: Thank you very much.
10 LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: Thank you very much and thank you
11 again for going through that experience. Thank you.
12 A. Thank you.