A “well-known individual” has failed in his attempt to stop two media organisations from publishing allegations of inappropriate sexual activities towards young women, the high court has ruled.
The legal team for the anonymous individual, known in court only as PPT, had claimed he was “highly likely” to attempt suicide if the Guardian and ITN published the allegations, which he denies.
PPT’s legal team said he had attempted to kill himself twice since being contacted about the allegations in May. On the second occasion he absconded from a secure hospital to do so, they said.
The judge in the case, Mr Justice Nicklin, concluded he was satisfied that a decision to permit publication of the claims, the anticipation of publication and publication itself “would each materially increase the claimant’s risk of suicide”.
“That increase would be very substantial,” he said.
However, he found that it was for the state’s health services to protect PPT from harm in the form of mental health treatment, rather than the court’s responsibility to protect him by stopping the allegations from being published.
The claimant was seeking to block publication of the allegations by citing article two of the European convention on human rights (ECHR), which relates to the right to life; article three, relating to “inhuman or degrading treatment”; and article eight, which protects the right to respect for private and family life.
“The court has not assumed responsibility for the claimant’s psychiatric treatment or safety in the relevant sense,” Nicklin’s ruling states. “In the present case, the state has assumed responsibility for the claimant’s immediate safety through the psychiatric hospital and mental health services.
“The claimant is detained under the Mental Health Act 1983. The hospital exercises direct control over his care, observation, treatment, access to means of self-harm, leave and eventual discharge. It has assumed responsibility for the very risk with which article two is concerned.
“The evidence establishes that the hospital can provide significant protection. Inpatient treatment cannot eliminate the risk, but it materially reduces the likelihood of suicide.”
Nicklin said he had to balance the claimant’s rights with the media outlets’ right of freedom of expression.
The claimant had also made a claim under article eight of the ECHR about the impact his death, serious self-harm or a prolonged psychiatric admission would have upon his relationship with his son.
Nicklin said the claim had “very substantial weight”, but had to be balanced against the rights of the media companies to publish.
He said an injunction “would constitute an exceptionally serious interference” with their rights.
“It would prohibit the defendants from publishing the results of their investigations into allegations of serious wrongdoing by a prominent individual,” he found. “It would also prevent the sources whose accounts form part of those investigations from communicating their experiences to the public.”
The anonymity of the claimant remains in place because the judge granted him permission to appeal against the ruling.
Nicklin’s ruling stated that the Guardian and ITN allege that the claimant used his power and status as a well-known public figure to “establish contact with young women, who were also considerably younger than him, and engage, and/or seek to engage in inappropriate sexual activity”.
They claim the alleged incidents took place over several years and that some of them, if proved, could amount to criminal offences.
The judge emphasised that the current case did not examine whether the allegations against the claimant were true, but only whether the court should prevent the media outlets from publishing them.
He said the proposed journalism “did not lose its public interest value” merely because the allegations were disputed.
Nicklin also pointed to the implications of granting an injunction based on the risk of suicide.
“The principle contended for would apply whenever the court was satisfied that otherwise lawful publication would create a sufficiently grave risk of suicide or psychiatric harm and that restraint was the most effective means of preventing the trigger,” he found.
“The evidence does not identify a point at which publication would become safe merely through the passage of time. The relief sought would therefore be of uncertain and potentially indefinite duration.”
Nicklin rejected a proposal for the injunction to remain in place with a reassessment of the claimant’s condition after 18 months.
“The evidence does not … provide a clinical basis for selecting that or any other period for reassessment, or for concluding that treatment would by then have reduced the publication-related risk sufficiently,” he found.
