By Nathan Sparkes

Mail intrusion “abhorrent and outside even the most basic standards of human decency”, Sir Elton John alleges in claim against the Daily Mail

In addition to Baroness Lawrence and Sir Simon Hughes, Sir Elton John, David Furnish and Sadie Frost also gave evidence in the Daily Mail phone hacking trial over the last two weeks. The news publisher is accused of commissioning a range of unlawful acts to obtain stories about its targets.

The alleged wrongdoing at the centre of the claims of Sir Elton John and his husband David Furnish relates to their private friendships, Sir Elton’s medical history, and their first son Zachary.

Introducing the articles containing information which he believes was obtained unlawfully, Furnish observes that the Mail had always been “actively homophobic”.  But what really angered the couple was the Mail’s alleged use of unlawful means.  This was, Furnish says, “an abomination”.

An evidently painful intrusion was the Mail’s publication of the birth certificate of the couple’s first son Zachary.  The child’s first legal document, this was, in itself, “deeply disturbing” and “outrageous, invasive and upsetting”.  The couple were especially concerned for the surrogate, who did not have experience with the media, and whose privacy they were desperate to protect.

Furnish goes on to recall how the information was used to attack the couple’s sexuality:

“To make matters worse, The Mail used the birth certificate story to feed into their homophobic agenda. They paired it with unflattering photos of Elton and me leaving a fancy dress party and mocked us with a caption casting me as the “mother” and Elton as the “father.” It was deeply offensive but entirely in keeping with their attitude toward us.”

One paragraph in Furnish’s witness statement simply states, “Elton and I are incredibly angry.”

Other coverage included references to deeply private information, such as “questions of paternity” and the couples’ egg donor.  Everything about the baby’s life seemed to be fair game to the Mail, despite the couples’ determination to protect the boy’s privacy.

Two occasions on which Sir Elton was hospitalised were also covered in the Mail; in both cases the couple wanted to keep details private and yet the Mail had discovered the details.  The couple allege that they could only have accessed this information by relying on unlawful means.

Other coverage risked undermining their close friendship with Elizabeth Hurley, and contributed to the challenging circumstances she was facing in her life.

Sir Elton sums up how angry he and David Furnish were about all that they believe the Mail did to them:

“I feel passionately about what has happened and how wrong it is that such gross invasions could have been inflicted upon us and our family and friends without us ever knowing.”

He adds,

“There have been many unacceptable features of this claim for David and me. The exploitation of love, connection, trust and bonds to find out information shared in confidence. The secrecy and invisibility of such evil acts that we never had a chance of catching or detecting or putting a stop to, which we would have done immediately had we known what was happening. The violation of our home and the safety of our children and loved ones. But from a personal level, I have found The Mail’s deliberate invasion into my medical health and medical details surrounding the birth of our son Zachary abhorrent and outside even the most basic standards of human decency.”

Finally, in an explicit reference to the lack of any independent regulation of the press, he says,

“The British press operates under a voluntary code of practice, not a binding legal framework. If they cannot abide even by those voluntary standards - and clearly, they cannot - then legal action is the only way forward.”

Actress and film producer Sadie Frost is also among the claimants in the trial.

“I began to feel that I could not openly speak to the doctors, my friends or my family about it otherwise it would somehow end up in Associated’s papers. I began to shut down. I stopped eating and started to lose a lot of weight. I felt suicidal. I hid, humiliated by what Associated were publishing about me.”

- Witness Statement of Sadie Frost

Sadie Frost’s evidence is among the most upsetting and damning of all of the claimants’.

In it, she alleges the most deeply personal intrusions, over the course of an incredibly challenging period in her life.

It was while she was suffering from severe mental ill-health, raising young children, and as her marriage was falling apart, that she alleges the Mail illegally spied on her and published her secrets and private thoughts for the world to see.

These alleged intrusions included, in particular, medical treatment for her infant daughter, her termination of an ectopic pregnancy and medication she was taking for depression and lack of sleep.

Summing up the impact of the Mail’s alleged illegality, she describes the sense of isolation she felt:

“The stories they wrote violated me, my friends and family, and my children who were still so small, and they made me believe that I could not trust anyone. They were always written so close to home, like it was someone who knew me really well that was talking to the journalists. That is what I suspected at the time.

“I had also been diagnosed with psychotic post-natal depression and it was so hard to make sense of things and instead, those articles just made things crumble even more. I am so angry that [the Daily Mail’s publisher] Associated did this to me and thought it was okay to profit from someone going through so much pain without a thought for me or my children and the suffering they were causing me and us all.”

Frost later comments that she did not speak to her sisters for years, because she worried they might be leaking information.

Frost adds,

“Looking back now, Associated were the worst of all the newspaper groups. They flaunted an air of respectability and sold themselves as a newspaper for women, all the while they were publishing stories that were viciously mean to me and many other women. They campaigned to pit me against Jude and then Sienna Miller and were relentless in their reporting of my mental health issues… I was very unwell at the time and these articles just made it all so much worse.

“The effect it also had on my family was extremely distressing. They goaded my dying father whilst he was in hospital and reported on conversations that [Frost’s son] Raff was having with his own father. It makes me sick to my stomach to think that they were listening in on the conversations between a child and their father.”

Aside from the most severe alleged intrusions, Frost’s statement describes a series of articles which damaged her relationship with her ex-husband Jude Law.  These included articles from while they were together and also after they had split, when they hoped to remain on good terms for the benefit of their children.

These articles, which did so much damage to their relationship, were also obtained, in Frost’s view, by illegal means.

Altogether, Frost’s statement is a powerful reminder of the courage and bravery of all the claimants.  They have all seen their secrets and the most personal parts of their lives analysed and picked over publicly in court all over again.  But they have also all been very clear about their objective: to stand up for their rights, and see The Daily Mail held to account for the crimes they believe were committed against them.

The Daily Mail’s publisher, Associated Newspapers, denies all wrongdoing.