A phone-hacking victim who was targeted by private investigator Glenn Mulcaire appears to have implicated another newspaper other than the News of the World in their evidence to the Leveson Inquiry.
The victim, identified only as HJK, gave anonymous evidence to the Leveson Inquiry last week and is also pursuing a civil action against News of the World publisher News Group Newspapers.
In their witness statement HJK said ‘the publishers of the News of the World have now admitted in the course of my claim that Mulcaire obtained my numbers and accessed my voicemail and that they are vicariously liable (although it was a journalist from [redacted] who had doorstepped me”.
HJK met a ‘well-known individual’through voluntary work in 2006 and began dating them in February.
Two months later they received a call on their mobile from someone claiming to be from the Royal Mail, who said they wanted to deliver a package but that ‘the label had ripped off leaving no address and that all was left on the package was my mobile number”.
HJK thought in hindsight it was ‘very strange’that a package would have a mobile number on it but ‘had no reason to be suspicious of anyone at that time and I gave out my address”.
The statement continued: ‘On a Saturday in late April 2006, my doorbell rang at about 9am in the morning.
‘I answered the door and was confronted by a man who introduced himself and said that he was a journalist from [redacted].”
The journalist quizzed HJK about their relationship with ‘X”, which they repeatedly denied.
HJK then called X, who was ‘clearly alarmed”.
‘I could tell that X was questioning whether or not I could be trusted and whether it was actually me who had approached the journalist,’they said, adding: ‘We also resolved that day that we should no longer see each other which was upsetting enough in itself.”
Later that day HJK was called on their mobile by the journalist who had doorstepped them – though they had never given the journalist the number.
HJK later told their boss that a story would be published in the unidentified paper, but that ‘in the end, the story that dominated all the newspapers that Sunday concerned [redacted].
‘This, coupled with my non-collaboration with the press, had apparently knocked the story about my relationship with X off the news.”
HJK said despite their relief that nothing was published they suffered ‘severe repercussions at work’after being ‘bullied and singled-out for criticism”.
In the summer of 2006 HJK was contacted by their mobile phone provider and told their account security had been compromised.
‘During the conversation it dawned on me that the information the journalist who doorstepped me in April must have been linked to the interception of my voicemail.”
Shortly after the call Mulcaire and former News of the World royal editor Clive Goodman were arrested for phone-hacking, but HJK claimed they were never contacted by the police in relation to their allegations.
‘In 2010, after reading about Mr Mulcaire selecting a literary agent and about the judicial review that John Prescott and others were bringing I decided to approach the lawyer dealing with case and explain my situation.”
HJK later met with officers from the Met and was shown documents that revealed transcripts of messages between them and X, and notes in Mulcaire’s notebook detailing their address, phone numbers, passwords and other information.
HJK concluded the statement by claiming: ‘When I heard [former Met assistant commissioner] John Yates’s comments after the Guardian revelation in 2009, I was so disgusted and disillusioned that I tore up and threw out the business card of [redacted] journalist that I had held on to for so long.
‘It is obviously frustrating that because of this act that I now do not know the name of the journalist although [redacted] could find out from their own records.’
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