Milly Dowler & the Phone Hacking Scandal

In 2002, 13-year-old Milly Dowler disappeared in Surrey. Tragically, it was later found that she had been murdered. During the police investigation, journalists from the News of the World accessed and hacked her phone.

FFurthermore, they may have deleted voicemail messages from Milly’s family, giving them false hope that she was alive The revelation of this hacking sparked widespread public outrage and contributed to calls for the Leveson Inquiry into press standards and conduct to take place

Overview

Key facts

• Journalists at News of the World hacked the phone of a missing child
• Surrey Police were inadvertently informed that Milly’s phone had been hacked by the News of the World back in 2002, but failed to even investigate the publisher
• Many years later the family discovered their private messages had been accessed without consent.
• In listening in on Milly’s phone messages, the News of the World may have deleted them, leading her family to think she was responding.
• These revelations contributed to calls for the Leveson Inquiry to take place in 2011.

Further reading

• Context and extended analysis [October 2012]: Extract from Everybody’s Hacked Off on the Dowler story and its impact
• Trial context [May 2014]: Prosecution: Brooks, Coulson and Kuttner knew all about phone hacking‍
• Information from the court hearing [January 2014]: Brooks believed Dowler hacking story was a “BBC‑Guardian‑Old Labour hit”‍‍
• Related trial information [June 2014]: Recruitment agency boss remembered call about Milly Dowler voicemail

Significance of this story

What happened to the Dowlers revealed that journalists were engaging in illegal intrusion into private communications — even in profoundly sensitive circumstances — and that existing press regulation failed to prevent or properly respond to this wrongdoing.  It was also the case that, in 2011, a lot of the accounts of press intrusion concerned well-known figures (“celebrities”); this was evidence that publishers were also targeting victims of crime.

The fact that Surrey Police knew about the hacking but sat on this information for many years also contributed to concerns that the News of the World and the police were too close, and had developed unhealthy and even corrupt relationships.

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