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Lisa Moorish has praised Hacked Off for holding newspapers to account, after detailing her experiences of criminality and targeted abuse at the hands of the tabloid press.

The singer told how her success came at a cost, as her relationships were exposed and her secrets laid bare, when private messages on her phone were accessed and the contents printed on the front pages.

She details her experience in an article for Byline Times.

"As a 17 -year -old recording artist and published songwriter signed to Jive Records in 1989, I never dreamed for one moment that I’d go on to be defined by the relationships and children I had with two well -known British rock musicians.

"It all started very positively.' she says, "But the media attention then morphed into what felt like a witch-hunt.

"Looking back on the press’ misogynist treatment of women, it made perfect sense - especially for a woman of colour from a lower-class background, like me.

"Growing up with three main national newspapers dominating the narrative of UK society, what was pushed  and sold to me as a pre-teen girl living in Brixton, south London in the 1980’s was fame, sex, money and status.

"My family bought these papers, even though we were the ones in British society - because of our race and class- being negatively targeted. Having a black father, I " remembered the anger and distress I felt at articles aimed at black men in particular.

"But I had stars in my eyes.

 "By my early 20s, the intrusive investigations of my personal life, and sexist, misogynistic takes, in the British tabloids, had begun. Their interest in me made me feel immediately exposed and very uncomfortable.

"Memories of me browsing through the newspapers as a little girl, seeing the right-wing rhetoric and racism, came back to me. I had unconsciously developed a deep hatred for the British tabloids as a child.

"The 3:00 AM girls at the Mirror (that so-called liberal, working-class Labour paper) and reporters on The Sun's Bizarre page would sidle up to me at music or fashion events I attended when promoting my releases. I would be very short with them, guarded, and would rudely rebuff their seemingly innocent striking up a ‘striking up a friendly conversation’ approaches  - as they dug for any dirt they could to use to distort anything I’d say. I’d give them my sternest look, tell them ‘I don't talk to tabloids sorry’,  and off I’d strut.

"What a little upstart she is. Who does she think she is? She needs taking down a peg or two. And that's what they did. I was learning quickly. After all, I’d witnessed much more intensive intrusive behaviour from them towards Kate Moss, Noel Gallagher, and many other prominent figures in my circles back then.

Any well-known male musician I was seen near would trigger phone calls to my manager asking, ‘are they an item?’ They even suggested I was having a fling with George Michael at one point. 

"But my biggest sin? Having relationships with two prominent rock stars, and having children with them." (Molly Moorish-Gallagher is the daughter of Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher, and Astile Doherty’s father is The Libertines’ Pete Doherty.)

I’d only disclosed the identity of my daughter Molly's father to close family and fewer than a handful of very close friends. Not even he was aware. This was a choice I made to raise her alone, without his involvement.

So, imagine my distress and horror when she was around 18 months old, and someone called me to say the story of Molly's father's identity was to be splashed all over a tabloid. There were the usual in accuracies and lies, but some other very specific details that only legal representatives and family members knew.

She continues: "The targeted attacks on me increased. Worse, the tabloids had a knack of spinning stories to make it look as though you'd informed them yourself, which pretty much ended any credibility I had as a growing artist.

"In 2014, I had a call from a lawyer saying my mobile phone number had come up as part of the phone-hacking scandal investigations. After years of feeling suspicious and paranoid of people in my circles - thinking I’d been betrayed by someone I knew and had confided in - I then realised it was likely that my daughter's father's identity exposé a was linked to this.

"Back in my 90’s ‘heyday’ when I was mixing with a very affluent, glamorous, and famous crowd - Kate, Noel, Meg Mathews, and Pearl Lowe were all close friends -most of us wondered how, everywhere we went, the paparazzi seemed to magically appear. The accusations thrown around at our family and friends because of stories appearing in the tabloids when you'd only told me told one or two others, had a serious impact on our friendships and relationships.

"I, and many young women like me, clearly deserved to be exposed, denigrated, mostly lied about to entertain, to feed the insatiable appetite for ‘celebrity’ gossip in the British tabloids. The truth didn't matter. A twisted narrative is so much more interesting. 

"My children, now in their twenties, have been targeted by the tabloids, but they are wiser, more informed and educated because of my experiences. But the differences in how women are treated in the press compared with men seems to be more prevalent than ever."

I can't praise enough the Hacked Off group holding the tabloids to account, with Hugh Grant taking the lead in fearlessly publicly calling out Rupert Murdoch, Paul Dacre and their cronies if only more powerful artists, actors, musicians and entertainers did the same there could be some real change.

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