Prince faces
suspicion that his biological father is James Hewitt, as he is the first king
to be cross-examined in court in 130 years. Check here for the latest
developments.
Prince Harry
says he feared British tabloid journalists wanted to prove his father was James
Hewitt so he could be “ousted” from the royal family.
Harry made
the remarks in a witness statement that was released Tuesday morning as he
became the first senior royal to give evidence and be cross examined in open
court in over 130 years.
As part of
his statement, Harry detailed dozens of articles that he believes Mirror Group
Newspapers (MGN) obtained by illegal means, including voicemail hacking.
One of these
was an article published in 2002 in the Sunday People headlined: “Plot to rob
the DNA of Harry.”
Harry said
the article “reported a plot to steal a sample of my DNA to test my parentage”
in the wake of multiple rumors that Hewitt was his father after his mother
admitted to having an affair with him in her Panorama interview with Martin
Bashir.
Prince Harry
said in a statement: "Many newspapers reported rumors that my biological
father was James Hewitt. He was the man my mother had an affair with after I
was born. I said. I didn't know when this and similar articles were published
that my mother had never met Major Hewitt before I was born. I learned about
this schedule around 2014, but I now know it was common knowledge among defense
journalists.
"When I
was her 18 and had just lost my mother six years ago, stories like this felt so
hurtful and so real to me. They were hurtful, mean, and It was cruel. I have
always questioned the motives behind the stories. Did the newspapers want to
arouse suspicion in order to banish me from the royal family?
Prince Harry
discussed rumors that Hewitt was his father in his memoir Spare, writing: I was
looking for his DNA to prove it. That was my first clue after tormenting and
hiding her mother. ”, they will pick me up soon. I stepped out of a black SUV
in central London just before 10am local time.
Harry donned
his dark suit and said 'Good morning' to the waiting reporters. He is
testifying in a lawsuit against the Mirror Group Newsletters, publishers of the
British tabloid Daily Mirror, which accuses the company of illegally publishing
articles.
He writes:
“My experience as a member of the royal family shows that each of us has a
specific role to play by the tabloids. And they will find out what suits them
best, especially if you are the "agent" of the "heir", and
tell them as many newspapers as possible. Encourage them to play roles that
sell. In that case, you are either a ``playboy prince'', a ``loser'', a
``dropout'', or in my case a ``thick'', a ``cheater'', an ``underage drinker''
or an ``irresponsible drug addict''. It will be The list goes on.
“As a teenager and in my early twenties, I
ended up feeling as though I was playing up to a lot of the headlines and
stereotypes that they wanted to pin on me mainly because I thought that, if
they are printing this rubbish about me and people were believing it, I may as
well `do the crime`, so to speak.
“It was a downward spiral, whereby the
tabloids would constantly try and coax me, a `damaged` young man, into doing
something stupid that would make a good story and sell lots of newspapers.
Looking back on it now, such behavior on their part is utterly vile.”
Harry said
the papers took “pleasure” in ruining his relationships, because as a single
person he ”sold more newspapers” and said, “Whenever I got into a relationship,
they were very keen to report the details but would then, very quickly, seek to
try and break it up by putting as much strain on it and creating as much
distrust as humanly possible... This twisted objective is still pursued to this
day even though I`m now married.”
He added:
“At no point did I have a girlfriend or a relationship with anyone without the
tabloids getting involved and ultimately trying to ruin it using whatever
unlawful means at their disposal.”
Harry argued
that the publication of “articles about me that were often wrong but
interspersed with snippets of truth, which I now think were most likely gleaned
from voicemail interception and/or unlawful information gathering…created an
alternative and distorted version of me and my life to the general public—being
those people that I had to serve and interact with as part of my role in the
Royal Family—to the point where any one of the thousands of people that I met
or was introduced to on any given day, could easily have gone `you know what,
you`re an idiot. I`ve read all the stories about you and I`m now going to stab
you.`”
Harry then
moved on to a discussion of the 33 sample articles and why he believed they
were based on illegally gathered information.
He said he
believed that "when I first went to Eton as a minor, the school gave me
the first mobile phone." , and most of the time I never got a phone bill.
As far as I know, this is all handled by an institution, presumably for
security reasons, which seems ironic now.
He said, 'I
couldn't access my voicemail unless the little envelope icon was flashing.
Sometimes this icon disappeared before I even checked my voicemail. I don't
know how long it's been since I heard them, but probably soon, the symbols
disappeared. I also distinctly remember people saying to me `did you not get my
voicemail?` on both a personal and a work-related level. I was like, `no,` and
sometimes I would go back into my voicemail to look for it but still couldn`t
find it.”
He said the
hacking, “created a huge amount of paranoia in my relationships. I would become
immediately suspicious of anyone that was named in a story about me… I felt
that I couldn`t trust anybody, which was an awful feeling for me especially at
such a young age. As I am uncovering the extent of the unlawful activities
carried out by MGN`s journalist and senior executives towards me, I feel
somewhat relieved to know that my paranoia towards my friends and family had,
in fact, been misplaced, although feel sad for how much it impacted my
adolescence.”
He also
discussed the Mirror snooping on his mother Princess Diana`s calls under
then-editor Piers Morgan, saying, “The thought of Piers Morgan and his band of
journalists earwigging into my mother`s private and sensitive messages (in the
same way as they have me) and then having given her a `nightmare time` three
months prior to her death in Paris, makes me feel physically sick and even more
determined to hold those responsible, including Mr Morgan, accountable for
their vile and entirely unjustified behavior.”
He later
attacked Morgan, who has become one of Harry and Meghan`s chief critics, again,
saying: “Unfortunately, as a consequence of me bringing my Mirror Group claim,
both myself and my wife have been subjected to a barrage of horrific personal
attacks and intimidation from Piers Morgan, who was the Editor of the Daily
Mirror between 1995 and 2004, presumably in retaliation and in the hope that I
will back down, before being able to hold him properly accountable for his
unlawful activity towards both me and my mother during his editorship.
In an
extraordinary attack on the government, which makes clear how far Harry has
departed from the usual royal protocols, Harry said he was bringing the case
because, “Our country is judged globally by the state of our press and our
government—both of which I believe are at rock bottom.