{"id":404772,"date":"2026-02-03T01:09:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-03T01:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/404772\/"},"modified":"2026-02-03T01:09:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T01:09:08","slug":"doreen-lawrence-tells-court-she-felt-taken-for-a-fool-by-daily-mail-publisher-associated-newspapers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/404772\/","title":{"rendered":"Doreen Lawrence tells court she felt \u2018taken for a fool\u2019 by Daily Mail publisher | Associated Newspapers"},"content":{"rendered":"

The mother of the murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence<\/a> has said she felt she had been \u201ctaken for a fool\u201d by the publisher of the Daily Mail, after she was told about allegations it had targeted her with unlawful information gathering techniques.<\/p>\n

Appearing at the high court in London, Doreen Lawrence<\/a> said she felt angry because of the trust she had placed in the Daily Mail, owing to its coverage of her son\u2019s case.<\/p>\n

Lady Lawrence is one of seven figures bringing legal action against Associated Newspapers<\/a> Ltd (ANL) over alleged phone hacking, \u201cblagging\u201d and other forms of unlawful information gathering.<\/p>\n

The other claimants are Prince Harry, Sir Elton John and his husband, David Furnish, the actors Elizabeth Hurley<\/a> and Sadie Frost, and the former Liberal Democrat MP Simon Hughes.<\/p>\n

Giving evidence, Lawrence said she felt angry about how she had been treated, accusing the publisher of using her and her son\u2019s case \u201cto give them credibility of supporting a black family\u201d.<\/p>\n

Lawrence\u2019s involvement in the case is of particular significance, given the Daily Mail\u2019s repeated campaigning for justice for her son<\/a> since his murder in 1993. Paul Dacre, the Daily Mail\u2019s former long-serving editor, has held it up as one of the newspaper\u2019s most important campaigns.<\/p>\n

ANL denies all the allegations of unlawful information gathering, describing them as \u201clurid\u201d and \u201cpreposterous\u201d. Lawrence is bringing her claims against ANL in relation to five articles published between 1997 and 2007.<\/p>\n

In a written statement to the court, she accused the publisher of \u201clandline tapping me, blagging me and hacking into my voicemails, monitoring my bank account and phone bills, targeting me with hidden electronic surveillance, and making corrupt payments to serving police officers to steal information about the murder investigations into Stephen\u2019s death whilst pretending to be my friend\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had trusted the Mail and worked with the Mail for 25 years,\u201d she said. \u201cI felt like I had been taken for a fool. I still do. I don\u2019t trust them at all any more after what they have done to me.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am a victim all over again, but by people who I thought were my allies and friends. I am being made to fight when all I have ever wanted is to be told the plain truth and for justice to be done, and an apology. I am angry that I have been made to fight in the courts for over three years for things that could be so easy and simple.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said she learned that there was potentially troubling information relating to her after being contacted by Prince Harry<\/a>. \u201cIn his email, Prince Harry said there was some information that had come to light and that it was something I would want to know about,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

She said she then met the claimants\u2019 lawyers at the Corinthia hotel in London, who told her the information had \u201caccidentally surfaced\u201d about her in 2021 \u201cthrough a conversation between two private investigators who had worked for the Mail\u201d.<\/p>\n

One of the key parts of her case is a recording of a private investigator apparently admitting to \u201cblagging\u201d information from Lawrence by pretending to be a journalist from the Guardian.<\/p>\n

ANL\u2019s lawyers alleged that researchers working on behalf of the claimants had been trying to induce the private investigator, Christine Hart, to provide evidence \u201cwith the promise of a book deal\u201d.<\/p>\n

Antony White KC, the barrister leading ANL\u2019s case, said the Mail ran a \u201csustained campaign\u201d on Stephen Lawrence\u2019s case, lasting 15 years. He said from the thousands of articles published, five articles are being complained about in the case by Lawrence, which were not complained about at the time of publication.<\/p>\n

In written submission to the court, ANL\u2019s lawyers said the \u201cserious allegations, which are denied in their entirety, are unsupported by the available evidence\u201d.<\/p>\n

They said they were a product of an attempt by the claimants\u2019 researchers and legal team to present a case against the publisher \u201cbased entirely on spurious and\/or discredited information, none of which is before the court in the form of proper admissible evidence\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn fact, the reality is that the information in each of the articles was obtained by entirely legitimate reporting and based on the sources identified by Associated in its defence and evidence,\u201d White submitted.<\/p>\n

ANL and Stephen Wright, the author of the articles cited by Lawrence, have \u201crejected firmly\u201d allegations of making payments to police officers.<\/p>\n

The trial continues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The mother of the murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence has said she felt she had been \u201ctaken for a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":404773,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-404772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=404772"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404772\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/404773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=404772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=404772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=404772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}