The royal family taught Prince Harry to “never complain, never explain.”
In a witness statement submitted as part of his civil claim against Associated Newspapers over their phone hacking scandal, the Duke of Sussex revealed that information about the hacking was withheld from him by the royal family.
“The Institution made it clear that we did not need to know anything about phone hacking and it was made clear to me that the royal family did not sit in the witness box because that could open up a can of worms,” Harry said, according to The Independent.
The royal explained, “I became aware that I had a claim that I could bring” in 2018.
He added, “The Institution was without a doubt withholding information from me for a long time about NGN’s phone hacking and that has only become clear in recent years as I have pursued my own claim with different legal advice and representation.”
In fact, according to Harry, it wasn’t until he left the U.K. that he finally learned that others associated with the family had brought their own claims against the publisher, which owns The Daily Mail, among other outlets.
“It is not an exaggeration to say that the bubble burst in terms of what I knew in 2020 when I moved out of the United Kingdom,” he said. “There was never any centralized discussion between us about who had brought claims as each office in the Institution is siloed.”
Finally, Harry added, “There is this misconception that we are all in constant communication with one another but that is not true.”
The News International phone hacking story first broke in 2011, when it was revealed that the phones of many in public life, along with the phones of murder and terror attack victims, had been hacked by members of the press.
