Father wins apology over daughter's 'monstrous abuse' book

A FATHER yesterday accepted a public apology and donations to charity from the publisher of a book in which his daughter accused him of "monstrous behaviour" during her childhood.

Tom Sanders had brought High Court libel proceedings against Hodder & Stoughton over a 2007 memoir, Mummy's Witness, by Gayle Sanders.

His counsel, Sara Mansoori, told Mr Justice Eady in London that it set out "a tale of a harrowing childhood filled with unimaginable terror".

She said that it made the most horrific allegations against Mr Sanders, claiming that he sexually, emotionally and physically abused Gayle from the age of four and that he regularly and viciously abused her mother, Sue.

"The book claims that Gayle lived in a house where unimaginable violence and cruelty could erupt at any moment, describing her home as 'a place ruled over by my father with his unpredictable and monstrous behaviour'."

Ms Mansoori told the judge that all these allegations were completely untrue and Mr Sanders maintained that there was no evidence to substantiate them.

He said that, contrary to the picture painted in the book, Gayle's relations with him were entirely happy, and he had evidence in the form of letters and documents which supported his version of events.

She said that the allegations had caused Mr Sanders and his other children a huge amount of distress. But he was pleased to have reached an agreement with the publisher which allowed him the opportunity to set the record straight and under which it was to make donations to the Royal Air Force Benevolent Fund and the Fire Fighters Charity, and to meet his legal costs.

Alfred Church, a solicitor, for Hodder & Stoughton, said it published Gayle's story in good faith and she firmly stood by it.

"As an established publisher, Hodder & Stoughton supports its authors. Without a full trial it is not possible to resolve where the truth lies," he said."

Hodder & Stoughton note that there are often two sides to a story and accept that the book does not put forward Mr Sanders' version of events.

"They are pleased that the amicable settlement has avoided the distress which litigation would inevitably have caused.

"Hodder & Stoughton apologise to Mr Sanders for the distress caused to him and other members of his family and his brother's family."

The case comes in the wake of a recent court libel ruling in favour of an author whose mother sued the same publishing house over a book which accused her of sustained childhood cruelty and neglect.

In Ugly, part-time judge Constance Briscoe described how her mother repeatedly beat her with a stick for bed-wetting and drove her to attempt suicide by drinking bleach.

A jury unanimously found for the defendants, who said the book was true.

FACT BOX

UP TO 30 per cent of the non-fiction paperback chart on any given week is made up of "misery memoirs" and 85 per cent of the genre's readers are female.

Some 400,000 copies of Ugly by Constance Briscoe have been sold since the UK bestseller was published.

Carmen Briscoe-Mitchell, 74, lost her libel action on 1 December, in which she claimed her daughter's allegations in Ugly were a "piece of fiction" and she insisted she had enjoyed a loving relationship with her daughter.

A Million Little Pieces (2003) by James Frey, a bleak tale of his rehab for alcohol and drug addictions, was found in 2006 to be much exaggerated.

In 2009 bookshops will be stocking more misery memoirs with typical titles such as Stolen Innocence and Too Naughty To Be Loved.