‘Press intrusion was more traumatic than attack on daughter’

The mother of Abigail Witchalls, who was left paralysed after being stabbed in front of her son, said the media intrusion following the attack was in some ways more traumatic than tending to her daughter.

Baroness Hollins told the Leveson Inquiry that much of the reporting was “honest and compassionate”, but the scale of it was “incredibly intrusive”.

She said: “We couldn’t trust anybody, and it began to form divisions among members of the family about how to deal with it. And in some ways it was more traumatic, if you can believe it, than the experience of actually attending to the real tragic event that had taken place.”

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Mrs Witchalls was left paralysed after being stabbed in the neck as she pushed her toddler son in his buggy near her home in Little Bookham, Surrey, on 20 April 2005, in an attack which shocked the nation.

Her mother described the massive interest that newspapers and broadcasters showed in the horrifying attack.

She said: “The press coverage of my daughter’s injury was just everywhere, every day. Her story was on the News at Ten, for example, every night for a month. It was just huge, the amount of coverage. And it was incredibly intrusive.”

Baroness Hollins added: “The intrusion seemed really not to have any sensitivity to the fact that we were not in any way seeking publicity. My daughter was not a celebrity. We were dealing with something that was very difficult for everybody to cope with, and here we had this intrusion into our lives and it felt like that intrusion was insensitive.”

The inquiry also heard that three of the UK’s largest mobile phone companies took at least five years to tell customers their voicemails had been hacked.

The mobile phone companies launched inquiries into security after the arrest of News of the World royal reporter Clive Goodman in August 2006.

The press standards inquiry heard investigations established there were 40 hacking victims on the Vodafone network, 45 on Orange and 71 on T-Mobile.

Head of security for Vodafone Mark Hughes said: “With the benefit of hindsight, it would have been much better to have a level of clarity with the police much earlier so we could tell our customers what the issue was.”

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Meanwhile, the editors of The Times and The Sun have been recalled to give further evidence to the Leveson Inquiry.

It is understood Times editor James Harding will be asked about alleged e-mail hacking at his paper when he returns on Tuesday. Sun editor Dominic Mohan has also been recalled to answer more questions.

The inquiry has been told a Times journalist hacked the e-mails of a police blogger who used the name NightJack. Labour MP Tom Watson said the Metropolitan Police were investigating.

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