Meghan Markle Felt "Unprotected" By the Royal Family During Her Pregnancy, Legal Docs Say
By: Bedaura Haseen
On Sunday, a new legal document was released from the lawsuit against the Mail filed by Meghan Markle and her legal team.
Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, photo via Vanity Fair
In the document, the Duchess of Sussex revealed that she felt “unprotected” from the intense media scrutiny she received as an active member of the royal family. This topic first came up in January, when Meghan and Harry were so fed up with the British tabloids that they decided to step down from their official royal titles and no longer represent the Queen as working members of the royal family.
Markles’ lawyers criticized the royal family for not doing anything to help Markle during the time of "tremendous emotional distress." A spokesman from her legal team said "The Claimant had become the subject of a large number of false and damaging articles by the UK tabloid media, specifically by the Defendant, which caused tremendous emotional distress and damage to her mental health.”
The Duchess of Sussex is taking legal action against the Mail because of the misuse of private information, infringement of copyright, and breach of the Data Protection Act 2018. The Mail published excerpts from a private letter the duchess wrote to her estranged father, Thomas Markle, after the royal wedding.
The lawsuit was criticized because People Magazine, who had interviewed a friend of Markle’s before it became public. Markle says that she The tabloids had accused the duchess of “invading her own privacy.” The duchess did not know about the interview.
The duchess was also "prohibited from defending herself", her lawyers stated. According to her legal team, if Markle had "been asked or been given the opportunity to participate, she would have asked the KP Communications Team to say on the record that she had not been involved with the People magazine article, as she had not been."
Markle faced intense scrutiny from UK tabloids while she was pregnant with her son, Archie. As the first Black Duchess the palace has ever seen, many people believe that Markle was largely unfairly targeted because she was Black. A viral Buzzfeed article shares in depth the tense double-standards in tabloid reporting that Markle was affected by.
