LAST UPDATE | 29 Jul 2022

REBEKAH VARDY HAS lost the “Wagatha Christie” libel battle against Coleen Rooney over a viral social media post, after a UK High Court judge found it was “substantially true”.

In a viral social media post in October 2019, Rooney (36) said she had carried out a “sting operation” and accused Vardy (40) of leaking “false stories” about her private life to the press.

The wife of former England star Wayne Rooney publicly claimed Vardy’s account was the source behind three fake stories she had posted on her private Instagram account.

Vardy, who is married to Leicester striker Jamie Vardy, denied leaking the stories and sued her fellow footballer’s wife for libel, while Coleen Rooney defended the claim on the basis her post was “substantially true”.

Both women attended a week-long trial at the High Court in London in May, which attracted a huge amount of press attention.

In a much-anticipated ruling this afternoon, Mrs Justice Steyn found in Rooney’s favour and dismissed the claim against her.

The judge said it was “likely” that Vardy’s agent at the time, Caroline Watt, “undertook the direct act” of passing the information to The Sun.

But she added: “Nonetheless, the evidence … clearly shows, in my view, that Mrs Vardy knew of and condoned this behaviour, actively engaging in it by directing Ms Watt to the private Instagram account, sending her screenshots of Mrs Rooney’s posts, drawing attention to items of potential interest to the press, and answering additional queries raised by the press via Ms Watt.”

Reactions

Rebekah Vardy has released a statement saying she is “extremely sad and disappointed” at the judge’s decision on her libel claim against Coleen Rooney.

Vardy said: “I am extremely sad and disappointed at the decision that the judge has reached. It is not the result that I had expected, nor believe was just. I brought this action to vindicate my reputation and am devastated by the judge’s finding.”

“The judge accepted that publication of Coleen’s post was not in the ‘public interest’ and she also rejected her claim that I was the ‘Secret Wag’. But as for the rest of her judgement, she got it wrong and this is something I cannot accept,” she said.

Vardy issued a plea to those who have subjected her to abuse to stop, and indicated she does not intend to appeal against the ruling, saying “the case is over”.

“As I explained in my evidence I, my family and even my unborn baby, were subjected to disgusting messages and vile abuse following Coleen’s post and these have continued even during the course of the trial,” she said.

“Please can the people who have been abusing me and my family now stop. The case is over.

“I want to thank everyone who has supported me.”

Meanwhile, Rooney said she was “pleased” with the ruling, adding that it was “not a case I ever sought or wanted”.

“I never believed it should have gone to court at such expense in times of hardship for so many people when the money could have been far better spent helping others,” Rooney said.

“Both before and after my social media posts in October 2019, I made every effort to avoid the need for such a drawn-out and public court case. All my attempts to do so were knocked back by Mrs Vardy.”

Rooney said that she had “no alternative” but to defend the claim “to end the repeated leaking of my private information to The Sun”.

She continued: “These leaks from my private Instagram account began in 2017. They continued for almost two years, intruding on my privacy and that of my family.”

“Although I bear Mrs Vardy no ill-will, today’s judgment makes clear that I was right in what I said in my posts of October 2019.”

The trial

During the trial, the two women each gave evidence, as did Wayne Rooney, also 36, who played for Everton and Manchester United as well as England.

Referring to Coleen Rooney’s viral “reveal” post at the end of the trial, her barrister David Sherborne told the court: “It is what she believed at the time… and it is what she believes even more so now that we have got to the end of the case.”

Sherborne argued that Vardy had a “habitual and established practice” of leaking information about those she knew – through Watt – to The Sun newspaper.

He said there were, in text message exchanges between Vardy and Watt, examples of the pair discussing leaking other people’s private information.

Justice Steyn said in her ruling: “In my judgment, the conclusions that I have reached as to the extent to which the claimant engaged in disclosing to The Sun information to which she only had access as a permitted follower of an Instagram account which she knew, and Mrs Rooney repeatedly asserted, was private, suffice to show the single meaning is substantially true.

The judge said Vardy’s evidence in the trial was “manifestly inconsistent” with other evidence on “many occasions”.

“It was evident that Mrs Vardy found the process of giving evidence stressful and, at times, distressing. I bear in mind when assessing her evidence the degree of stress she was naturally feeling, given the high-profile nature of the trial, the abuse that she has suffered since the reveal post was published, and the length of time she was in the witness box,” she said in her judgement.

“Nevertheless, I find that it is, unfortunately, necessary to treat Mrs Vardy’s evidence with very considerable caution.

“There were many occasions when her evidence was manifestly inconsistent with the contemporaneous documentary evidence, e.g. in relation to the World Cup 2018 and the photoshopped pictures, and others where she was evasive.”

Justice Steyn continued: “Mrs Vardy was generally unwilling to make factual concessions, however implausible her evidence.

“This inevitably affects my overall view of her credibility, although I have borne in mind that untruthful evidence may be given to mask guilt or to fortify innocence.”

In the first ruling in the case in November 2020, then-Justice Warby found the viral post had “clearly identified” Vardy as being “guilty of the serious and consistent breach of trust”.

He also found that an ordinary reader would read the post as claiming Vardy had “regularly and frequently abused her status as a trusted follower of Rooney’s personal Instagram account by secretly informing The Sun newspaper of Rooney’s private posts and stories”.

The libel battle came after Rooney publicly claimed that an account behind three fake stories in The Sun that she had posted on her personal Instagram account was Vardy’s.

The fake stories Rooney planted on her Instagram during the sting operation featured her travelling to Mexico for a “gender selection” procedure, her planning to return to TV, and the basement flooding at her home.

In the post on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, she wrote: “I have saved and screenshotted all the original stories which clearly show just one person has viewed them. “It’s ………. Rebekah Vardy’s account.”

It is believed the total legal costs of the case will be in the region of £3 million, most of which will now be borne by Vardy.