SINGER CHARLOTTE Church told the Leveson inquiry yesterday she believed her telephone had been hacked when she was 17, and that she was convinced the Sunnewspaper's report on her first pregnancy was also procured through phone-hacking, although she offered no evidence.
Church told the inquiry into British press standards that the damage she had suffered from tabloid coverage had been lasting.
“While newspapers such as Mr Murdoch’s have not helped my career, they certainly damaged it.
“I do of course accept television and radio have been very significant contributors to my success.”
The singer, whose career took off while she was still a teenager, said: “I definitely think, because my credibility has been blown to bits, I find it difficult to be taken seriously.
“I’ve been made a caricature for so long, and this person portrayed in the tabloids really isn’t me. It is not the person I am, and it’s had a massive impact on my career. A lot of this happened when I was just a minor and really young. It has had a psychological effect on me. I would hate to see that to happen to any other child who was in my position.”
Harassment by tabloid journalists led her mother to attempt to take her own life after one of the papers printed a story about her father having an affair, while paparazzi photographers had tried to take photographs up her skirt and down her blouse.
Highlighting the Sun's decision to publish a countdown clock on its website in the run-up to her 16th birthday – the age of sexual consent – she accused the tabloid of innuendo: "I was really uncomfortable with it," she told the inquiry.
Church also told the inquiry that she was advised to waive a £100,000 fee to perform at Rupert Murdoch’s wedding to Wendi Deng, because she would get “good press” from his newspapers.
The singer said she agreed to appear at the 1999 event – she was 13 at the time – because she was advised by her management and record company that it was a good idea given Mr Murdoch’s power and influence.
“I remember being told of the offer of the favour – to get good press – and I also remember being 13 and thinking, why would anyone take a favour of £100,000?
“But I was being advised by my management and a certain member of the record company that he was a very, very powerful man and could certainly do with a favour of this magnitude.”
Former teacher Chris Jefferies, who was wrongly accused of the murder last year of a Bristol woman, told yesterday how he had spent months scurrying from house to house fleeing tabloid reporters.
Saying that he had felt “like a Catholic recusant priest hiding in Reformation times”, Mr Jefferies said his life would never recover from the damage suffered last December after he was questioned by police investigating the murder of architect Jo Yeates.
In the end, a Dutch tenant in the house was jailed for her killing, although Mr Jefferies said he had been subject to “smears, innuendo and complete fiction” by the British press – with eight newspapers eventually forced to pay him damages.
Detailing his experience to the inquiry, Mr Jefferies, who rented out two flats in the building where Ms Yeates was murdered, said he had for months gone out only “after dark to occasionally walk my friends’ dog”.
“It is clear that all of these articles were calculated to vilify me and convince the public that I was responsible not only for Ms Yeates’s murder but other crimes or misdemeanours as well.
“The coverage was disgraceful and undermines basic principles of responsible journalism and the right to a fair trial,” he said.
In July, eight newspapers – the Daily Star, the Sun, Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror, Daily Mail,the Scotsman, Daily Recordand the Daily Express– paid substantial libel damages to him over the publication of more than 40 articles between late December and early January this year.
– (Additional reporting Guardian service)