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February 3rd, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda - Abigail Witchall’s mother said there was ‘no way’ the paper should have run the story
By
Nick Mcdermott
Last updated at 10:44 AM on 3rd February 2012
The mother of stabbing victim Abigail Witchalls yesterday criticised the News of The World for revealing her daughter was pregnant at the time of the attack, just four days after close relatives found out themselves.
Speaking at the Leveson Inquiry into press standards, Baroness Hollins said she had no idea how the now-defunct tabloid acquired the information, and added there was ‘no way’ it should have run the story, as her daughter was only five weeks pregnant at the time.
Mrs Witchalls was left paralysed after being stabbed in the neck in April 2005 while pushing her toddler son in his buggy through the leafy Surrey village of Little Bookham in broad daylight.
Abigail Witchalls was left paralysed after being stabbed in the neck in April 2005 while pushing her toddler son in his buggy through a leafy Surrey village
‘She didn’t know she was pregnant. She was five weeks pregnant, and it came to light when she was admitted [to hospital],’ Baroness Hollins said.
‘So this was news to the family, and it was very intimate and very sensitive information. There was no way that information should have been in the public domain.’
She added: ‘What were they doing publicising something so personal and intimate? No woman tells the world that she’s pregnant when she’s five weeks pregnant.’
However, in her witness statement, Baroness Hollins said ‘much of the press coverage told my daughter’s story in a compassionate way and raised so many people’s hope’.
Baroness Hollins, pictured, said she had no idea how the now-defunct tabloid acquired the information
But she also felt the scale of the reporting was ‘incredibly intrusive’.The former president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists added: ‘The press coverage of my daughter’s injury was just everywhere, every day.’
‘Her story was on the News at Ten every night for a month. 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.’
The inquiry heard the family hired a ‘media handler’ to advise them how to limit press intrusion, and that they turned down offers of up to £300,000 for their daughter’s story.
‘The intrusion seemed really not to have any sensitivity to the fact that we were not in any way seeking publicity,’ she said.
Baroness Hollins, who was made a life peer in 2010, criticised insensitive and inaccurate reporting, including:
■ An unidentified journalist visited her terminally-ill mother-in-law and refused to leave until she provided a picture of Mrs Witchalls;
■ A July 2006 story in The Sun featured photographs taken with a telephoto lens of Mrs Witchalls and her children on a pilgrimage to the French shrine of Lourdes;
■ An article published in The Daily Mail in November 2005 linking Mrs Witchalls’ attack to an assault suffered by her vulnerable brother some years earlier;
■ A report in The Sun in April 2009 that Mrs Witchalls had just regained the power of speech, when in fact she began talking again in 2005;
■ The Mail on Sunday published two images provided by the family, when they promised to only use one.
Jonathan Caplan, QC for Associated Newspapers, which publishes the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday, apologised on behalf of the Sunday title and said its actions were ‘a genuine mistake’.
The editors of The Times and The Sun are to be recalled to the inquiry. It is understood Times editor James Harding will be asked about alleged email hacking at his paper.
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Dear wjajh, why pick on ‘Bomber Harris’ and compare him to our snake like press? Harris did what was required of him by political masters and many at the time who had suffered greatly at he hands of the German war machine are and were truly grateful…
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apologise, apologise, apologise…seems in modern Britain it is ok to be a modern version of Bomber Harris .. providing of course you remember to apologise afterwards!
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