The retired teacher wrongly arrested for Joanna Yeates’s murder said he felt like he was under house arrest because of the media frenzy surrounding him.
Christopher Jefferies was forced to move between friends, he told the Leveson Inquiry today.
The landscape architect’s landlord, who was arrested on December 30th, 2010, and later released until January 1st, 2011, said: “Because the media interest was so enormous I was very strongly advised both by friends and lawyers not to go out.
“And in any case, if it had been apparent where I was staying, these friends would have been besieged by reporters and photographers.
“In effect for a period after I was released I was effectively under house arrest and went from friends to friends rather as if I were a recusant priest at the time of the Reformation I suppose, going from safe house to safe house.”
Mr Jefferies said after his release from custody it was suggested it would be good for his “psychological health” if he did not read the press coverage in detail, and he had only started it after libel action was started against several publications.
The former English teacher, who taught at Clifton College in Bristol, said he originally gave two statements to police - the first was as everyone in the area was asked to give statements, and he later made an additional one with extra information he thought important.
He told how he came under the media spotlight just before his arrest on December 30th.
“I think it was the day immediately before I was arrested, I was greeted by a large number of reporters and photographers as I was leaving the house one day, who seemed particularly interested to question me about the details of the second subsidiary statement that I had given to the police.
“The press had certainly acquired a somewhat garbled version of what that second statement contained.”
In his witness statement, Mr Jefferies said: “I can see now that, following my arrest, the national media shamelessly vilified me.
“The press set about what can only be described as a witch- hunt.” Mr Jefferies said that having his photograph on the front page of a number of papers had made him “instantly recognisable”.
“I had a distinctive appearance and it was as a result of the entire world knowing what I look like that it was suggested to me that I ought to change my appearance so that I would not be instantly recognisable and potentially harassed by the media.”
He told the inquiry that he brought legal proceedings against eight newspapers concerning 40 different articles. The attorney general brought contempt of court proceedings in relation to three articles.
Robert Jay QC, counsel for the inquiry, asked Mr Jefferies about when he was referred to as a “sexually perverted voyeur”.
Mr Jefferies said: “It was suggested there may have been some sort of sexual motive to the murder of Jo Yeates and at that time I was obviously a suspect of that murder.
“On the other hand it was suggested in some articles that I was gay so that created a problem as far as that was concerned.
“It was then suggested in another article that I was bisexual so the press were trying to have it every possible way.”
PA