Sunday Mirror hacked actor's 'deeply personal' voicemails, court told
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Version 0 of 1. A former Coronation Street actor broke down in tears as she told a court how Mirror Group journalists snooped on “very deeply personal” voicemail messages and printed stories that caused her son to be bullied and run away from home. Shobna Gulati accused the Sunday Mirror invading her privacy at her lowest moment with a front-page story in 2003 that speculated on the parentage of her nine-year-old son. “I consider that to be salacious gossip and that affected my son, who was nine years old,” she told the high court in London on Monday. “At the time at the school following the Sunday he was bullied on the Monday quite extensively about who his father was. “I’m a single mum, I live alone and I believe this wasn’t in the public interest that the parentage of my child would be debated in a Sunday newspaper.” Gulati, who starred in Coronation Street from 2001 to 2006 and later returned to the soap, is one of eight phone-hacking victims suing Mirror Group Newspapers, the publisher of the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and the People. The actor, who also appeared in Victoria Wood’s Dinnerladies, had her voicemails intercepted between May 2003 and January 2006, the high court heard. Becoming emotional in the witness box, Gulati described how her son had to leave school aged 14 due to bullying and ran away from home after the Sunday Mirror claimed his mother was to appear in I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here!, which would have meant she would have to move to Australia and be away from him for several weeks. “I had just left my job at Coronation Street. I was in a very unsure position. Also my mother had been seriously ill that year. Given that I’m a lone parent, he was concerned about who would look after him if I was to go into the jungle,” she said. Asked about another article published after Gulati left Coronation Street and split from her partner, she said: “When the whole world was colliding and you’ve got no one to share it with – the one person you share it with is perhaps your lover at the time and those voicemails were very, very deeply personal at the time. “The thing that affected me most deeply and caused me most pain and trauma – and it still does to this day – is the fact that I’m still unsure as to how much of my personal life was listened to by faceless, nameless folk who I may have talked to while sitting at the Pride of Britain awards ... It still leaves me feeling slightly empty inside.” Also giving evidence on Monday was TV producer Robert Ashworth, who said phone hacking had ruined his media career and marriage to former Coronation Street star Tracy Shaw. He said: “In Christmas 2003, I nearly took my life because I was in such a dark place and they [journalists] were laughing while they did it [hacked phones]? How many times were they listening to my deepest, darkest thoughts?” Becoming tearful, Ashworth added: “I lost my father this year. He was quite a simple man. He said why are you washing your dirty linen in public? I said: ‘It’s not me, dad. It’s not Tracy.’ He will never know the truth to that.” He said phone hacking “completely destroyed” the trust between himself and Shaw, who believed wrongly that had he leaked a story to the Sunday Mirror about him planning their divorce and “very much exacerbated” her problems with alcohol and an eating disorder. Ashworth and Gulati rejected Mirror Group’s apology, with the Coronation Street actor describing it as “hollow and disingenuous”. |