Coleen Rooney has said Rebekah Vardy’s private WhatsApp messages were “just evil”, as she finished giving evidence in the “Wagatha Christie” libel trial.
The court has previously heard that Vardy and her agent, Caroline Watt, had lengthy WhatsApp exchanges about Rooney’s personal life, in which Rooney was allegedly branded a “nasty bitch” and a “cunt”.
Rooney told the high court she spent months posting fake Instagram stories and restricting their audience to just Vardy’s account, in an effort to work out who was passing stories about her private life to the tabloid newspaper.
She said did not inform anyone – including her husband, Wayne – that she was conducting a months-long sting operation into who was leaking stories from a private Instagram account to the Sun.
Rooney said she stayed quiet because she did not want to suggest Vardy was leaking stories to the paper without being certain: “I don’t like to do something if I’m not 100% sure myself. I wouldn’t mention it to someone with the smallest little bit of doubt.”
Rooney said Vardy had told a “lot of lies” during the legal proceedings and insisted she only made the public accusation that Vardy was the leaker as a last resort to try to finally stop stories about her private life appearing in the newspaper.
Vardy denies being responsible for the leaks and is suing Rooney for libel.
Rooney concluded that Vardy’s account was responsible after another story apparently sourced to her private Instagram appeared in the Sun in October 2019. She then wrote her post accusing Vardy in longhand with a pen and notepad, before sending it to her brother to format for uploading to the internet.
Vardy’s legal team have repeatedly criticised Rooney’s failure to follow standard journalistic practice, such as requesting a comment from Vardy before publishing her accusation.
Rooney said she decided not to go to Vardy before posting the accusation in public, saying: “I know it sounds tough – but at the time I didn’t think she would tell the truth even if I confronted her.”
She also feared Vardy would try to brief friendly journalists if she had advance warning.
Rooney said her suspicions were raised further when she briefly blocked Vardy from the private Instagram account in early 2019 and Vardy messaged to complain about the decision.
At one point the court heard an extensive discussion of whether it was correct that photographs uploaded directly to Instagram stories are automatically saved as a copy on an iPhone’s camera roll.
Rooney told the court she found the entire “Wagatha Christie” label baffling and regularly monitored her own press coverage: “I do Google News and put my name in and read any relevant articles that come up.”
She said the WhatsApp messages involving Vardy and her agent that had been disclosed to the court were: “just evil and uncalled for, speaking about something you don’t know”.
“There’s no need for them to be stalking and monitoring me,” she said.
Rooney said anyone could have carried out her sting operation and it did not take much technical knowhow: “It wasn’t hard. Anyone could do it. It worked for me and I found out which account was doing it at the end of it.”
The court also heard from other witnesses for Rooney’s defence. A former Football Association official, Harpreet Robertson, said that during an England match at the Euro 2016 football tournament, Vardy sat in different seats to her allocated places – potentially to ensure she was “right in the eye line of anyone looking at, or photographing, Coleen”.
Robertson said: “The following morning, the tabloid papers were full of photographs of her sat directly behind Coleen. This was precisely the kind of media attention that the FA, and I, had tried to avoid.”
Rachel Monk, who helped Rooney with PR on an ad-hoc basis, also told the court she had been baffled when she was approached by the Sun journalist Ellie Henman with a story that the footballer’s wife was visiting a gender selection clinic.
Rooney alleges this fake story was leaked to the Sun from her private Instagram account by Vardy. Acting on her client’s orders, Monk – who was not aware of the sting operation – phoned back Henman and said there would be no comment on the story but it sounded “bonkers”.
Monk told the court this did not stop the tabloid: “Ellie replied and told me that the Sun would be running with the gender selection story because ‘they had a screenshot’, which confirmed their source.”
The trial continues, with Wayne Rooney due to be called as a witness on Tuesday, along with a number of technical experts who are expected to discuss the data retrieval issues that have plagued the case.
