By Nathan SparkesBaroness Lawrence, Prince Harry, Sir Elton John and David Furnish all attended court yesterday, on the first day of a preliminary hearing of a number of High Court claims alleging phone hacking and other unlawful information gathering against the Daily Mail’s publisher, Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL). ANL, which “vigorously denies all the claims against it”, is seeking to have the claims struck out. The hearing is continuing.Whatever the result of the hearing, the documents placed before the Court shows the profound effect of press intrusion on its victims. This is consistently underplayed by the media, but Baroness Lawrence’s comments in court documents lay bare the lasting impacts she has suffered as a result of the conduct which she believes has taken place.Quoting from Court documents, The Guardian writes of Baroness Lawrence,

"She wonders whether trusting the Daily Mail as she did caused her to have delayed or have failed her murdered son,” the documents say. “She asks herself whether more individuals could have been arrested, whether earlier investigations might have been more successful, and whether she could have got justice.”The documents say Lawrence now “feels a deep sense of betrayal. She finds it hard to believe the level of duplicity and manipulation that was clearly at play, knowing now as she does that the Daily Mail’s outward support for her fight to bring Stephen’s killers to justice was hollow, and worse, entirely false”.

Most victims of phone hacking were not people who were otherwise well-known. They were people like Baroness Lawrence, whom the media became interested in (eventually) after her son Stephen was murdered in a racist attack and she campaigned for justice.But regardless of whether the targets were well-known, the practice created a constant sense of insecurity in its victims, and often resulted in them becoming isolated from family and friends.Actress Sienna Miller, who settled a claim against The Sun’s publisher in December 2021 without any admission of liability, believes that news of her pregnancy was leaked by the newspaper.She said she believes that reporters at the newspaper were “responsible for leaking the pregnancy and that their actions… had led her to being unable to trust those closest to her when she really needed them.”Fellow actress Shobna Gulati also referred to the lasting impact of phone hacking on her life, after she settled her case with the publishers of the Mirror newspapers. “Salacious gossip” in the press about the father of her son led to him being bullied and running away from home.She said, “I believed it wasn't in the public interest that the parentage of my child would be debated in a Sunday newspaper”. She assumed that the information must have been leaked by her partner. After accusing him of doing so, the relationship broke down.The BBC reported,

She said she continues to be caused "all sorts of pain and trauma" because she is still unsure "as to how much of my personal life was listened to by faceless, nameless folk".

In a similar vein The Guardian’s report on the claims against the Mail refers to Court documents in which Prince Harry argues that he was “deprived” of an important period in his life, on account of intrusions he alleges took place:

Prince Harry said he had been targeted for information about his private relationship and alleged the unlawful activity used to obtain these stories meant “he was largely deprived of important aspects of his teenage years”.He said friends were lost or cut off as a result and everyone became a “suspect”, arguing that the stories were written in a manner that led him to believe those close to him were the source of the information being provided to the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday.

Hacked Off Board Director, and victim of phone hacking Jacqui Hames, described the feeling of beginning to understand that your private messages have been hacked in The Guardian.She said,

I suspect that as you are reading this, your mobile phone is somewhere close by. If it is, scroll through your messages and read or listen to the content.Now read or listen to them again through the lens of a tabloid journalist – out of context – looking for a story, looking for clues as to your whereabouts, activities, associations, relationships, private thoughts, feelings, opinions, arguments, arrangements. Has someone implicated you in something? What story could they possibly be writing? What could be misconstrued, misinterpreted, manipulated.At best, it is uncomfortable, annoying; you may feel irritated or even angry. At worst, your hands are shaking, possibly sweating, heart beating faster, breathing getting shallower and faster, your mind is racing as panic takes hold. You feel sick, overwhelmed, scared. As time goes by, you reflect on the implications for you, your family, friends, work, and become hyper-vigilant about whom you message, what you say, whom you trust.

It doesn’t matter if victims are well-known, well-resourced or not: the sense of powerlessness, paranoia and isolation of being a victim of phone hacking can cause lasting damage to anyone’s life.