Coleen Rooney: My online post was a last resort
Coleen Rooney told the High Court that her online post accusing Rebekah Vardy of leaking personal information to the Sun newspaper was a “last resort.”
Mrs Rooney made her first appearance in the witness box on day four of Mrs Vardy’s libel action.
She told the court on Friday that “how much interest” her so-called Wagatha Christie social media post generated in 2019 “surprised” her.
And that receiving harassment from Mrs Vardy was never her “intention.”
“It’s not in my nature to cause abuse or trolling in any way at all,” she said.
Mrs Vardy is suing Mrs Rooney for libel, alleging that she disclosed personal information to the Sun newspaper, which she disputes.
Mrs Rooney said she had set out a sting operation to find out who had been giving intimate material about her life to the Sun in a popular social media post dated October 2019.
She claimed that only “Rebekah Vardy’s account” had seen the phoney tales she had put on Instagram in an attempt to track down the offender.
Mrs Vardy’s barrister, Hugh Tomlinson, questioned Mrs Rooney about her goals for the widely circulated post.
She replied: “I wasn’t achieving anything, what I wanted was to stop the person who was leaking my private information to The Sun”. She added that stories “no matter how big or small” about her and her family had been “picked up by the media for 20 years”.
Information about her and her husband, she claimed, had been leaked at a time when “I didn’t know how my marriage was going to work out.”
Mrs Rooney stated that Mrs Vardy, whose husband Jamie played for the England national football team alongside her own husband Wayne, was “not in my circle” and that they had “never met socially.”
Mrs Vardy, 40, would message the 36-year-old when her name came in the press, which she described as “a regular occurrence.”
“I felt like when she contacted me it was to try and get information out of me,” Mrs Rooney said.
Mrs Vardy’s messages were “generally nice,” she told the court, but “at the end it was a bit unusual” that “someone who wasn’t that close to me [would be] constantly checking in with me all the time.”
When it was revealed, Mrs Rooney said in a written witness statement that seeing a message between Mrs Vardy and her agency referencing her late sister “knocked me sick.”
The defendant stated that she had never had a disagreement with any of her husband’s teammates’ other spouses.
When asked if she would have tried to ameliorate any online harassment with another social media post, she said, “Maybe I would have liked to have [done so],” but due to her lack of legal knowledge, she chose to follow “instruction of my legal team.”
Mrs Rooney also stated in her statement that she tried “in vain” to settle the case before it went to court.
“I have sought to resolve this matter amicably on various occasions because I was of the view that the time, money, resources and efforts involved could be better spent elsewhere, particularly in light of the Covid-19 pandemic,” she stated.
She added she had “no doubt that this litigation, whatever the outcome, will benefit neither Becky [Mrs Vardy] nor myself”.
Mrs Vardy broke down in tears again on Friday, under re-examination by her own counsel, as she had done the previous two days.
She claimed she was “bullied and manipulated” during a “exhausting” and “intimidating” cross examination by Mrs Rooney’s barrister David Sherborne, and that she continued to pursue legal action despite a letter from Mrs Rooney’s solicitors that she interpreted as a “threat” because she “didn’t do anything wrong.”
Mrs Vardy said she had only discussed Mrs Rooney’s private Instagram account with her agent Caroline Watt “a handful of times,” confirming that she was initially handed the password to her account when she went into the celebrity jungle on the ITV show I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!
Mrs Rooney was said to be “furious” after reading a Sun piece in January 2019 about her supposedly being involved in a car accident while she and her husband were living in the United States, having previously commented on Instagram about vehicle damage.
Mrs Rooney was informed of the allegation by one of her son’s football coaches, who was anxious for their safety, but “there was no crash,” according to the court.
The Liverpudlian claimed that a lorry “scraped down the side of the car,” owing to her unfamiliarity with driving on the right side of the road in the United States.
Mrs Rooney was “angry” and “annoyed” when the Sun published “untrue” information and private information was “getting out there,” she claimed.
Mrs Vardy’s lawyer told Mrs Rooney that she had “no evidence” that his client was involved in the alleged leaks.
“I believe that Mrs Vardy knew that this was happening, whether it was Mrs Vardy herself or it was someone she’s given permission to,” she responded.
Mr Tomlinson replied: “You might believe that Derby County [the team Mr Rooney currently manages] will win the Premiership. It’s not evidence that they are going to.”
Mrs Rooney, who described herself as a full-time mum in her witness statement, said at one stage: “I’m not a gossip, I don’t like to confirm things unless they are true,” later adding that she hadn’t picked Mrs Vardy’s name “out of thin air” during her own investigation.
The trial continues next week.
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