Kate McCann felt ‘violated’ by News of the World

KATE MCCANN told the Leveson Inquiry she felt like “climbing into a hole and not coming out” when the News of the World printed her intensely personal diary.

She described feeling “violated” by the paper’s publication of the leaked journal, which she began after her daughter Madeleine disappeared on holiday in Portugal in 2007.

Mrs McCann, 43, said the diary — which was so private she did not even show it to her husband Gerry — was her only way of communicating with her missing daughter.

She had just returned from church on Sunday, September 14, 2008 when she received a text message from a friend which read “Saw your diary in the newspapers, heartbreaking. I hope you’re all right”, the press standards inquiry heard.

Mrs McCann recalled this came “totally out of the blue” and left her with a “horribly panicky feeling”.

The News of the World had apparently obtained a translation of her diary from the Portuguese police and published it without her permission, the inquiry was told.

Mrs McCann said: “I felt totally violated. I had written these words at the most desperate time of my life, and it was my only way of communicating with Madeleine.

“There was absolutely no respect shown for me as a grieving mother or a human being or to my daughter. It made me feel very vulnerable and small, and I just couldn’t believe it.

“It didn’t stop there. It’s not just a one-day thing. The whole week was incredibly traumatic and every time I thought about it, I just couldn’t believe the injustice.

“I just recently read through my diary entries at that point in that week, and I talk about climbing into a hole and not coming out because I just felt so worthless that we had been treated like that.”

Mr McCann, 43, said his wife felt “mentally raped” by the News of the World’s publication of the journal under the headline: “Kate’s diary: in her own words.”

Mr McCann said the story gave the impression that his wife had authorised the publication of the diary.

“This added to our distress as it gave the impression that we were willing to capitalise financially on inherently private information,” he said in a statement to the inquiry.

The News of the World’s then-deputy editor, Ian Edmondson, had told the couple’s spokesman, Clarence Mitchell, that the paper was going to run a positive article that week but did not mention that it had a copy of Mrs McCann’s diary.

The McCanns also described how News of the World editor Colin Myler “beat them into submission” after they gave an interview to a rival publication.

Mr Myler was “irate” when he learned they had spoken to Hello! magazine around the first anniversary of Madeleine’s disappearance to promote a Europe-wide alert system for missing children, the inquiry heard.

Mr McCann said: “He was berating us for not doing an interview with the News of the World and told us how supportive the newspaper had been.

“He basically beat us into submission, verbally, and we agreed to do an interview the day after.”

The couple said on other occasions they had to stop newspapers from publishing untrue stories, giving the example of a false claim they had undergone IVF treatment to have another baby to “replace Madeleine”.

There was another time when they had to persuade a Scottish Sunday paper not to publish a photograph of them with Madeleine as a baby, which a journalist had obtained from Mr McCann’s mother Eileen, the inquiry was told.

Mr McCann described how the early support they received from journalists gradually changed over the summer and they came to face a barrage of negative headlines.

After they returned to Britain in September 2007, photographers camped outside their house, hid behind hedges and, on several occasions, banged on their windows, the inquiry heard.

Meanwhile, lawyer Mark Lewis, who represents a number of phone hacking victims, claimed the illegal interception of voicemails was “much more widespread” than just the News of the World.

He told the Leveson Inquiry that hacking the phones of celebrities and other people in the news was “too easy to do” for journalists.

Mr Lewis also told the inquiry News of the World journalists wrongly concluded Professional Footballers Association (PFA) chairman Gordon Taylor was having an affair after hacking his phone.

He said the paper’s reporters misinterpreted a voicemail message from a woman expressing her gratitude to Mr Taylor for speaking at her father’s funeral in which she said: “Thank you for yesterday, you were wonderful.”

Earlier, Paul Gascoigne’s ex-wife Sheryl told how she had to put her house on the market to fund a libel action against a newspaper.

Calling for the system to be changed so it was not prohibitively expensive to sue for defamation, Mrs Gascoigne said she was told she had to find £200,000 (€232,476) to pursue her claim.

She also said paparazzi photographers followed her car and forced her to crawl around on her hands and knees at home to avoid having her picture taken.

But Mrs Gascoigne — who began a relationship with the player in 1991, married him five years later and divorced him in 1998 — told the inquiry she accepted some of the unwanted media attention “went with the territory”.

She put her house up for sale in summer last year to fund her legal costs in a claim against the Sunday Mirror, although the case was settled just before it sold, the hearing was told.