Imogen Thomas ‘blackmailed’ superinjunction footballer, judge says

Details emerge as Welsh model and the Sun attempt to lift court judgment being called ‘death of the kiss and tell’ The model Imogen Thomas’s legal fight to name the married footballer with whom she had an affair took a dramatic twist when she found herself accused of allegedly blackmailing the man with demands for first £50,000 and then £100,000. At the high court in London, Mr Justice Eady – explaining why he had granted an injunction preventing the naming of the footballer last month – said there was “ample reason not to trust” Thomas, 28, in an eight-page judgment that allowed some details of her dealings with the footballer to be made public. The judge noted that evidence before the court on 14 April “appeared strongly to suggest that the claimant [the anonymous footballer] was being blackmailed” – although he did not reach a final conclusion on the point. Thomas denies the allegation. The former Big Brother contestant is at the centre of the storm about the use of gagging orders to suppress publication of celebrity sexual indiscretions. Controversy over gagging orders has grown since the names of several celebrities claimed to have taken out injunctions to protect their privacy began circulating on Twitter. Thomas was also in court to try to have the ban on naming the player lifted, in conjunction with lawyers acting for the Sun. Eady’s ruling was so harsh some lawyers argued it could amount to the death of the tabloid “kiss and tell”. Evidence put before Eady last month by the footballer accused Thomas of asking for money, a signed football shirt and match tickets. Thomas and the Premiership player met four times between September and December last year, according to the footballer’s evidence. She then contacted him by text in March, which led him to conclude she was thinking of selling her story, according to the judge’s summary. She told him that “she wanted, or ‘needed’ a payment from him of £50,000″. The footballer agreed to meet her “in a hotel where he was staying” in April. There he gave her a signed football shirt but said he was not prepared to give her £50,000. She asked to see him again shortly afterwards, to which “he agreed with reluctance” and provided her with some football tickets. Although the position was “by no means clear” Eady said the evidence “appeared to suggest” Thomas arranged the two hotel meetings “in collaboration with photographers and/or journalists”. The player claimed that on 13 April, he texted Thomas to say he might be willing to offer her some money after all. At this point, Thomas is accused of attempting to solicit £100,000 from the player – actions the judge thought could be interpreted as blackmail, although he added: “I cannot come to any final conclusion about it at this stage.” The next day, an account of a sexual relationship between Thomas and an unidentified footballer appeared in the Sun, prompting the request for an injunction to stop his identity being revealed. Thomas said she was “stunned” by how she had been portrayed in the ruling, and her legal team said she denied asking for money. Reading from a statement, she said: “Yet again my name and reputation have been trashed while the man I had a relationship with is able to hide. What’s more I can’t even defend myself because I have been gagged. If this is the way privacy injunctions are supposed to work there is something seriously wrong with the law.” The Sun sought to have the gagging order lifted, arguing that Thomas’s right to freedom of expression, covered by article 10 of the European convention on human rights, outweighed the footballer’s right to remain nameless under article 8, the right to privacy. Eady’s initial ruling said there “can be no automatic priority accorded to freedom of speech” and that “as in so many ‘kiss and tell’ cases” there was no obvious justification in naming the player on public interest grounds. The judge noted that lawyers for the Sun had “not even argued that publication would serve the public interest”. That led some to conclude that reporting of kiss and tell stories could become considerably less likely. David Allen Green, head of media at Preiskel & Co, said: “It is a civilised and welcome judgment, but the decision by Sir David Eady is a serious blow to the tabloid press. “The traditional kiss and tell story is now increasingly costly and difficult.” Earlier yesterday, it emerged that another married premiership footballer had obtained an injunction preventing the publication of details relating to an alleged affair by a red top tabloid. Most of the gagging orders in existence have been taken out by men preventing the revelation of sexual indiscretions, although Eady dismissed suggestions that he and other judges were “introducing a law of privacy by the back door”. Instead, Eady pointedly observed that the way the Human Rights Act would work in practice is hardly a great surprise. He cited the former Lord Chancellor, Lord Irvine, who told the peers at the time of the bill’s passage through parliament in 1997 that “any privacy law developed by judges following the enactment would be a better law”. Privacy & the media Privacy The Sun Newspapers & magazines News International National newspapers Newspapers Dan Sabbagh Josh Halliday guardian.co.uk

Posted by on May 16, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.