Chris Packham said he has been vindicated after a judge found that he had been subjected to an online ideological campaign, accusing him of fraud and dishonesty, before awarding him £90,000 in libel damages.
The prominent naturalist found his character, speech impediment and Asperger syndrome mocked in articles published on the Country Squire Magazine (CSM) website, which also accused him of lying to raise funds for a charity of which he is a trustee.
In a damning written judgment published on Thursday, Mr Justice Saini criticised the conduct of the website’s editor Dominic Wightman and writer Nigel Bean for articles he said were “without any proper evidential basis”.
He also condemned their behaviour during the litigation at the high court, which he said they used “to introduce offensive material to smear Mr Packham”. This included falsely alleging that he had forged his own death threat letter and indicating in correspondence that they intended to use the trial to accuse the TV presenter of being “a rapist, a bully, and a pervert”, without – the judge said – “a shred of evidence”.
Speaking outside the court afterwards, Packham said that, despite being the claimant, he had felt as if he was on trial.
“I’d like to thank all of my followers for your unswerving support and belief in my honest crusade to make the world a better place for wildlife, people and the environment; that’s what I get up in the morning to try and do,” he said. “I didn’t expect to find myself in court defending that but I have done so successfully.”
He called the judgment “a full and frank vindication of my innocence”, adding: “The onslaught of abuse and hatred continues simply because I want reform, I want the world to be a healthier place for wildlife, wild animal welfare, domestic animal welfare, the environment, so on and so forth. And there are people who have a vested interest in preventing that reform.”
In an allegation that the judge said went to “the heart of [Packham’s] professional and personal life”, CSM alleged he defrauded and “manipulated” people in an attempt to raise funds for the Wildheart Trust, which runs a wildlife sanctuary on the Isle of Wight, by claiming tigers had been rescued from a circus despite knowing they had been donated by the circus and were well looked after.
Packham was also accused by the site of dishonestly raising money for the charity at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic while knowing it was due to receive a £500,000 insurance payout.
CSM, which describes itself as “a platform for voices from the overlooked Great British Countryside”, also alleged Packham lied when he said that gamekeepers on two Scottish estates were burning peat during the 2021 UN Cop26 climate conference in Glasgow.
Saini said: “The defendants’ overriding aim was to pursue an agenda or campaign against Mr Packham and those who share his views. That agenda was focused on alleging fraud and dishonesty without any proper evidential basis.”
The judge said Wightman, an asset manager, and Bean, an IT consultant, had lost all objectivity because they saw Packham as being part of a left-leaning section of society, including the BBC and animal rights activists.
They originally relied on a defence of truth for all three allegations but later dropped it for all bar the “tiger fraud” story, which Saini said they “fail to come even close to establishing the substantial truth of”. They also failed in a public interest defence for the allegations.
Saini said any investigative journalism there quickly “gave way … to increasingly hyperbolic and vitriolic smearing of Mr Packham”. He added: “Their unsubstantiated claims would have misled and agitated vocal and sometimes violent groups. Those people have posted threatening and vile material about Mr Packham and his family online.”
The judge said the fake death threat letter was the most serious way in which Wightman and Bean had continued their campaign against Packham during the litigation. They hired an expert who concluded that the naturalist had definitely written the letter only to find in November last year that they had been comparing it with the handwriting of Packham’s accountant. Despite this finding, Bean and Wightman did not withdraw the allegation until the third day of the trial.
Saini said he took account of their conduct in reaching the damages award and warned them they faced paying a higher proportion of their opponent’s costs than is usual, as a result. He ordered them to make an interim costs payment of £400,000 within 28 days.
As well as Wightman and Bean, Packham brought a claim against CSM contributor Paul Read, who was described by his lawyer as a “mere proofreader”, but the claim was dismissed by the judge, who said Read was not involved in the relevant discussions about the content or its publication. Packham will have to pay some of Read’s legal bill, with the amounts to be assessed at a later date.
