This judgment was handed down remotely at 10.30am on 14 April 2025 by circulation to the parties or their representatives by e-mail and by release to the National Archives.
Aidan Eardley KC:
Introduction
- At a return date hearing on 3 April 2025 I continued until trial the interim injunction granted by Mr Justice Ritchie on 13 March 2025 and made other orders. These are my reasons. In order to keep them to a reasonable length, I gratefully adopt passages from the public judgment of Ritchie J [2025] EWHC 697 (KB) where appropriate. I have also produced a private version of this judgment, containing detail that could not be included in a public judgment without undermining the purpose of the injunction.
- The Claimant was represented by Sara Mansoori KC and Kirsten Sjøvoll. The Defendant represents herself. I was aware of the inequality of arms and indeed, based on the evidence the Defendant submitted concerning her medical conditions and life experiences, I regard her as a vulnerable party within the meaning of CPR PD 1A. I sought to conduct the hearing in a way that reflected this assessment.
- The issues I had to determine were as follows:
(1) Should the return date hearing be in private and should anonymity be preserved?
(2) Should the existing injunction be discharged?
(3) Should the injunction be continued (or reimposed)?
(4) Should the Defendant be ordered to destroy/deliver up the naked images of the Claimant that she holds?
(5) Should the Defendant be ordered to delete certain social media posts?
(6) Should there be restrictions on access to the Court file?
(7) Should time for service of the Particulars of Claim be extended?
- There were also some issues that the Defendant sought to raise but which I declined to deal with. The hearing papers included an unsealed Application Notice filed by the Defendant seeking a non-molestation order under the Family Law Act 1996, and an unsealed Part 8 Claim Form. A draft order she submitted contained a non-molestation order, a declaration recognising her alleged marriage to the Claimant and associated financial obligations, an order for compensation for personal injury and emotional distress, and an order that the Claimant be referred to the criminal authorities for investigation.
- I refused to deal with any of these matters. I could not tell whether the Application Notice and Part 8 Claim Form had actually been issued by the Court. In any event, it would have been inappropriate and impossible to deal with any of these matters at the hearing. Indeed some of them would appear to be matters that are usually dealt with in the Family Court, not the King's Bench Division. If the Court has issued or eventually issues the Defendant's Application Notice or Claim Form, they will need to be placed before a Judge for directions. The Defendant is free to contact the police herself (and says she has done so). The injunction allows for this.
Background and recent developments
- The Claimant's account of the background to this claim is set out in the judgment of Ritchie J at [12]-[30].
- I do not need to recite everything that has occurred since 13 March 2025, but Ms Mansoori drew my attention to the following.
- After service of the injunction, the Defendant removed from her social media account two posts which referred to and contained pictures of the Claimant. She then reinstated these posts and left them on public view despite an objection from the Claimant's solicitors on 31 March 2025. The Defendant also continued to make further posts on social media, three of which, the Claimant contends, refer to him in terms that amount to further misuse of his private information or harassment.
- On 31 March 2025, the Defendant emailed the Court attaching a letter she had sent to a regulatory body in connection with an ongoing consultation in which she refers to being the defendant in a case and gives details of the case in terms that match the present case. Also attached was a consultation response form, in her own name, and containing details of this case (without expressly identifying herself as a party to it). She did however indicate that the response should be treated confidentially and that the regulator should not refer to it publicly. A further document that was attached to this email to the Court was a document headed "Defence submission" with the title of this case and bearing her own name. It appears to be a submission to the Court making certain points that she had also made to the regulatory body. It is not clear whether this third document had also been sent to the regulatory body. In the Defendant's favour, I assume that she sent it only to the Court.
10. Electronic hearing bundles were sent to the Defendant on 31 March 2025. The Defendant appeared concerned that the Claimant's solicitors might not provide her with hard-copy bundles. I was shown an email she sent to a printing company the same day, apparently attaching an electronic copy of the first hearing bundle. The message said, "…if they refuse I will come to you to print it so please don't print because it will cost me a lot of money to print all of this papers they are sending…". In the event, the Claimant's solicitors did provide hard copy bundles. The correspondence I have seen suggests this was on 1 April 2025.
The Defendant's position
- The Court now has the benefit of evidence and submissions from the Defendant. She filed a witness statement of her own with a substantial exhibit and statements from 3 other individuals. Prior to this, she had also sent the Claimant's solicitors a document headed "statement of events" and many documents that she says support her account. The Defendant also filed a skeleton and addressed me at length orally. I have considered all this material, along with the responsive evidence of the Claimant. It is helpful to summarise this under the following headings. It is not necessary to go into every detail.
Naked images of the Claimant
- The Defendant says that she has several pictures of the Claimant naked, which she took while in Asia in June 2024. She says that they shared lots of naked pictures with each other during their "marriage" and that the Claimant has naked photos of her as well. She says that she sent the Claimant one picture of him naked, attached to an email in March 2025, but has not shared any others and has no intention of doing so.
The Islamic marriage
- The Defendant is adamant that she and the Claimant went through a valid Islamic marriage ceremony on 29 July 2023. She says that, to be valid, it did not need to be registered or recorded in writing: it sufficed that it was conducted by an imam in private in the presence of at least 2 witnesses. She rejects the suggestion that she has been inconsistent about the date of the wedding.
- On the Defendant's account, the Claimant told her that her financial problems would disappear if she married him and she eventually agreed. She did so, she says, because her religious and cultural norms forbid sexual relationships outside marriage. She says that he proposed to her and gave her a wedding ring at a dinner at a London hotel, in the presence of about 10 others. She says that the Claimant then booked her into another London hotel and, on 29 July 2023, they went through the ceremony in private. She says this was organised by the Claimant's associate and that he and another named person were the witnesses. She also named the imam.
- The Defendant did not serve witness statements from either of the wedding witnesses nor anyone who attended the dinner at which the Claimant allegedly proposed. However, she pointed to a number of documents which she says support her case. These included a photograph of her ring and photographs of her dressed in apparently ceremonial costume standing with the Claimant and some other people. She also showed the Court two Whatsapp messages sent by the Claimant to two of her sisters on the occasions of their birthdays in which he refers to himself as their "brother in law" and the Defendant's "husband"; and texts between the Claimant and the Defendant's son, in which he addresses him as "son". She showed me a money transfer receipt dated 30 July 2023, which she said showed the Claimant's associate paying the imam, though the document did not state what the transfer was for.
- The Defendant also contends that the marriage agreement provided for a dowry ('Mahr') both at the time of the marriage and in the event of a divorce. She says that the dowry due at the time of the marriage consisted in the Claimant's agreement to provide her with a car at a cost of many thousands of pounds; and that, in the event of divorce, he agreed to pay her another very large sum. She says that during their "marriage" the Claimant provided her an allowance of several thousand pounds per month in cash and also made other substantial transfers to her bank account.
- The Claimant repeated his evidence that the photos of the alleged wedding were in fact taken at a business dinner the Defendant had arranged. He says that the "wedding ring" was an artificial ring that came from a number of samples that he had brought over from Asia because the Defendant had said she wanted to start a jewellery business. He accepts that he paid for the Defendant to stay in the London hotel in July 2023, but that was because she had told him that she had been attacked in her home, leaving her hospitalised (on 27 July 2023, just 2 days before the alleged wedding), and did not feel safe returning to her property.
- The Claimant had already explained to Ritchie J how he objected to the Defendant referring to him as "husband", except in front of her son. He accepted sending the Whatsapps to the Defendant's sisters. He says he did this at her request, and that she requested that he refer to himself as her husband in these messages in order to avoid embarrassment. He says that he "hesitantly" agreed to this.
- The Claimant also pointed to a Whatsapp message the Defendant had asked him to send to her father in January 2024 in which he referred to himself as the Defendant's "fiancé" because, he said, he resisted her request to call himself her "husband" and this was as far as he would go in order to help her to avoid embarrassment. The point the Claimant makes about this is that it is inconsistent with the Defendant's account that they were already married by this point. He adds it to his list of the Defendant's inconsistencies, namely the Defendant's own reference, in one of her documents, to the marriage having taken place in July 2024, and her reliance on a handwritten note (forged, on the Claimant's account) from December 2023 stating an intention to marry.
- As to the alleged financial agreements surrounding the "marriage", the Claimant denies that there was ever any "dowry" agreement and he points to the Defendant's inconsistency as to the sum she says is due at divorce. The Claimant accepts that he was generous to the Defendant financially, but only in an effort to help her and not out of any formal obligation. It is notable that he made this very point in an email in October 2023, as soon as the Claimant began emailing him with "divorce" in the email header. He wrote on 9 October 2024, "I don't understand what you are trying to do by putting a divorce settlement heading thing in your email though both of us know that our relationship is without any conditions and obligations".
The alleged STD infection
- The Defendant alleges that the Claimant had been suffering from a rash in his groin and obstructive urinary symptoms. She says she therefore arranged private medical appointments for the Claimant with a dermatologist and a urologist, which she attended with the Claimant. The medical reports were sent to the Defendant at her address, not the Claimant (and each of them, incidentally, refers to her as his wife). She also managed to obtain the Claimant's dental records, showing that he had attended appointments in December 2024 because of gum pain. She accepts that none of the reports suggest that the Claimant has, or express concern that he may have an STD, but she says that the symptoms are consistent with an STD and that this has not been ruled out by the reports. She also showed the Court a picture which she says she and the Claimant took of his own genitals to compare against online images of genital conditions. She says that she became concerned about risks to her own health and confronted him about this, in response to which the Claimant abruptly changed his travel plans and left the country.
- The Defendant says that she herself began to experience genital discomfort in late December and saw a gynaecologist in January 2025 who sent her for tests. She says that she was subsequently diagnosed with an STD. The pathology report she has exhibited does not quite say this: it describes certain symptoms without using the name of the STD.
- The Defendant's case therefore is that the cause of her symptoms is the STD and that the Claimant knowingly infected her with it through sexual activity. She says this is a criminal offence.
- The Claimant says he did not know the Defendant had the medical reports that she has exhibited, and that he had never seen them. He says that she was not introduced as his wife at the appointments, so she must have referred to herself in this way when arranging the appointments. The Claimant complained to the urology clinic when he found out what had happened and received an apology. He points out that none of the letters mention a STD. He says that the photograph that the Defendant has provided is not a photograph of his own genitals, but a stock image freely available on the internet. He says he cut short his stay in London in December 2024 because of the Defendant's harassing behaviour.
"Revenge porn"
- The Defendant says that, while she was in hospital in March 2025, her friend "X" told her that, in about July 2024, the Claimant had sent X naked images of the Defendant. She identified some of these alleged images in the hearing bundle, saying that the Claimant had taken them on his phone during a personal moment and without her consent. She says that the Claimant shared at least 12 such photos with X and that the Defendant has now reported this to the police as image-based abuse or, colloquially, "revenge porn".
- The Claimant explains things differently. He says that the Defendant put him in touch with X as someone he should go to in order to calm her down when they had rows (it was common ground that the relationship between the Claimant and Defendant was volatile). He says that, on one occasion, after a row, the Defendant had posted on social media that she was single again, along with various pictures of herself. The Claimant says he was not happy about this and asked X to intercede, sending her the photos that the Defendant had posted online. He denies taking or posting the explicit photos that the Defendant showed me in the bundle.
- X has provided a witness statement for the Defendant, but it would appear to give greater support to the Claimant's case. She says that there was an occasion when the Defendant had put some photos of herself online and the Claimant called her (X) to complain about it. Because she did not understand what it was all about, the Claimant sent her the photos so she could see. She describes the photos as showing the Defendant "almost naked, in a bikini on with a very intimate clothing" and that the Claimant had sent them "to show me that she is not respectful and she has behaviour like a prostitute". She refers to another call that all three of them had where the Claimant again complained about the nature of the photos the Defendant posts online. The hearing bundle also contained a text from X in which she says that the Claimant had sent her photos of the Defendant which were inappropriate, intimate and showed her almost naked, and that the Claimant had sent these in order to show X and others that the Defendant was not "correct" and unworthy of being his wife.
Alleged harassment and defamation by the Claimant
- The Defendant claims that, since January 2025, she has been the victim of a series disturbing and suspicious events, including two break-ins, the targeted theft of her laptop, phone and immigration documents, and vandalism of her office. She believes that the Claimant may be behind all this, perhaps acting in concert with another man with whom she was previously involved. She accepted fairly however, that for the time being this is merely speculation on her part. The Claimant denies the allegations.
- The Defendant also alleges that the Claimant has defamed or dishonoured her. That would seem, in large part, to be a repetition of things I have already mentioned: the Claimant's refusal to acknowledge that they are married, his alleged circulation of intimate photos of her, and his alleged infection of her with an STD.
Hearing in private and anonymity
30. Ms Mansoori asked me to conduct the hearing in private, submitting that this was strictly necessary for the administration of justice and relying on CPR 39.2(3)(a) ("publicity would defeat the object of the hearing"), (c) ("it involves confidential information… and publicity would damage that confidentiality"), and/or (g) ("any other reason"). She referred to the public judgment of Ritchie J which, in her contention, is relevant in two ways. First, it means that the open justice principle is served because the public can tell what the case is about. Second, it makes holding a public hearing highly problematic because things that are said in the course of the hearing might be put together with things in the public judgment to bring about jigsaw identification of the parties and members of the press would not necessarily know whether something said at the present hearing might have that effect. She submitted that holding the hearing in public would inhibit the parties' abilities to present their cases fully, relying on XLD v KZL [2020] EWHC 1558 (QB) at [17]. Ms Mansoori also submitted that the order for anonymity should be maintained, so as not to defeat the object of the proceedings. She argued that the anonymity order in itself was insufficient because, if the application were heard in public, details would emerge that tended to identify the parties.
- The Defendant resisted the application for a hearing in private and submitted that the parties should now be named. She submitted that this case is not about inherently private information. Rather, it is about the Claimant's conduct. She emphasised the test of strict necessity that applies when derogations from the open justice principle are permitted and submitted that this demanding test was not met here.
- I also heard brief submissions from a freelance court reporter, Sian Harris. She realistically recognised that I would probably need to hear the case in private but very properly reminded me that any derogations from the open justice principle should be as limited as possible and only made where strictly necessary.
- I decided to sit in private and to maintain the anonymity of the parties. Both measures were, in my view, strictly necessary, given that the Claimant is bringing these proceedings in order to protect his private information which, to date, has only been publicised to a limited extent.
- As to anonymity, Ritchie J had decided to anonymise the parties and to give a quite detailed public judgment. That was in keeping with the reasoning of Lord Neuberger MR in JIH v News Group Newspapers [2011] 1 WLR 1645 at [24]-[25] and [32]-[35] where he said that the open justice principle is often better served by anonymising the parties and giving a detailed public judgment rather than naming the parties and giving skeleton reasons. I cannot realistically switch horses now because, if I were to name the parties, the private information contained in Ritchie J's judgment would inevitably become associated with the Claimant.
- As to a private hearing, I note that Ritchie J considered that this was unnecessary when he heard the without notice application. However, a return date hearing is very different. There will inevitably be more evidence before the Court and a need to hear detailed submissions on that evidence. It can sometimes be possible to conduct such a hearing in public, with the parties referring obliquely to the sensitive information that is contained in documents, but this is a challenge even for a seasoned advocate. I have no doubt that, on the facts of this case, both parties would have been inhibited if they were required to present their cases in this way, and to the extent that the hearing would not have been fair. The difficulties would have been compounded by the fact that (very properly) Ritchie J had given a public judgment containing considerable detail about the case, and there is already some other information in the public domain through the Defendant's use of social media, meaning that information that the parties wished to refer to at the hearing would have risked jigsaw identification. In the circumstances, an anonymity order would have been inadequate on its own to preserve the privacy rights that the Claimant asserts. Accordingly, it was strictly necessary to sit in private.
Discharge of the existing injunction
- By a (sealed) Application Notice dated 14 March 2025, the Defendant asks the Court to discharge the injunction granted by Ritchie J. Since I was hearing this application on the day that injunction was due to expire, it might seem rather academic. However, if I were to find that (for example) the original injunction fell to be discharged because it had been obtained improperly, that would be likely to have costs consequences and likely to affect my decision as to whether a new injunction should be granted, so it was important to consider the Defendant's application. The Defendant says I should discharge the original injunction for a number of reasons.
- First, the Defendant says it was procedurally unfair for the Court to hear the application without notice to her, especially when, as the Claimant knew, she was due to be in hospital or recovering from surgery. In my judgment, there was nothing improper in the Claimant inviting the Court to proceed on an urgent, without notice basis. As Ritchie J acknowledged at [2] in his Judgment, there was a real likelihood that "tipping off" the Defendant would have encouraged the Defendant to carry out some or all of her threats before an injunction could be imposed. The obvious reason the Claimant sought an urgent hearing on 13 March 2025 was not to take advantage of the Defendant's hospitalisation, but because the Defendant herself had given 14 March 2025 as a deadline by which the Claimant had to pay up or face the consequences.
- Second, the Defendant objects to her anonymisation. The Claimant cannot be criticised for this. As I have already explained, anonymity is strictly necessary in this case.
- Third, the Defendant contends that the Claimant failed to show Ritchie J critical evidence in the case. At the hearing before me, she focussed on the absence of the naked image of the Claimant that she says she sent to him as an attachment to an email in March 2025. I have read the Claimant's solicitor's note of the hearing before Ritchie J. I can see that the Judge expressly asked about the images that had apparently been attached to the March 2025 email and that the Claimant's counsel responded, on instructions, to explain that the Claimant himself had never received the email (because his IT team had blocked emails from the Defendant) and that the Claimant's solicitor only learned of it because it was appended to the email sent on the following day, which was sent to her, but in a form that did not contain any attachments. I have no reason to doubt these explanations.
- More generally, as can be seen from Ritchie J's Judgment itself, the Claimant went to considerable lengths to discharge his duty of full and frank disclosure, including alerting the Court to facts – and such documents as he had in his possession – that the Defendant might seek to rely upon. There are also no grounds for criticising the post-hearing conduct of the Claimant or his solicitor (service of documents, provision of a note of the hearing etc). The Third Witness Statement of the Claimant's solicitor confirms that all this was done appropriately.
- In respect of her application to discharge, the Defendant goes on to make a number of other points but they appeared to me to merge into her general case that the injunction is unwarranted because the Claimant's evidence is incorrect or because she has a justification for her actions. Given the frequent allegations of criminality that the Defendant makes against the Claimant, it may be that she was submitting that he had not come to Court with "clean hands". If so, that is not a finding I could possibly make on the present state of the evidence, which is highly contested. If the Claimant has indeed conducted himself in a way that makes it inequitable for the Court to grant him relief, that is something that will only become clear at trial.
- For these reasons, I rejected the Defendant's application to discharge the injunction.
Continuation of the existing injunction
Misuse of private information and harassment – legal principles
- The substantive law on misuse of private information and harassment, as it applies to the present case, was set out by Ritchie J at [31]-[39] and [47]-[50] of his Judgment and I do not need to repeat it. At [50] Ritchie J noted some uncertainty in the case law as to whether a claimant must suffer the effects of the Defendant's course of conduct while in England and Wales in order for the tort of harassment to be complete. I would add to his list of relevant cases Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn v His Majesty Juan Carlos [2023] EWHC 2478 (KB) where, in the context of identifying what the "place of damage" is in harassment claims for the purposes of establishing jurisdiction under the Brussels Recast Regulation, Collins Rice J suggested that this consists in the claimant's experience of "being harassed" and described this as an impact on the claimant's feelings: see [84]-[87], [108]-[118], [125]-[126], [132]-[133]. The case is not directly on point however because Collins Rice J did not need to decide whether, in a case like the present which is brought against an English-domiciled defendant without reliance on the Regulation or some other rule governing extra-territorial jurisdiction, it is necessary to establish that a claimant experienced the effects of harassment, or did so within England and Wales. See also the discussion in The Law of Privacy and the Media (4th edn, OUP, 2024) at 6.49-6.60 where the editors suggest that the tort may be made out without proof of any effect on the claimant at all, thus rendering the question of where such effects are felt irrelevant. I return to this below.
Applicable threshold test for an injunction
- I am conscious that, in some cases of alleged blackmail, the Court has applied the ordinary American Cyanamid threshold test for an injunction ("serious issue to be tried") rather than the more demanding test in Human Rights Act 1998, s12(3) ("applicant likely to establish [at trial] that publication should not be allowed"), the argument being that blackmailers are not truly exercising any rights under ECHR Art 10. Based on the evidence that the Defendant has placed before the Court, I consider that I should apply the Human Rights Act test. Section 12(1) says that the section applies if the granting of relief "might affect the exercise of the Convention right to freedom of expression" (my emphasis). As I explain below, the Defendant says that she writes on social media in order to tell her own story and to raise awareness of women's issues. She has pointed me to publications that do appear to have that character at least in part. Whether or not she is ultimately found to be nothing more than a blackmailer, I consider that I must accept that continuing the injunction at the very least "might" interfere with the Defendant's exercise of her ECHR Art 10 rights. I have therefore applied the Human Rights Act test.
The Claimant's case for continuation of the injunction
- The injunction granted by Ritchie J prohibits the Defendant from using, disclosing (etc) three classes of private information, in summary: naked images of the Claimant, information about his medical history, and information about his sex life. The anti-harassment part of the injunction prohibits the Defendant (in summary) from communicating with or about the Claimant, directly or indirectly. There are appropriate carve-outs permitting the Defendant to communicate with legal and medical advisers, to bring proceedings, and to make disclosures to law enforcement agencies.
- In asking the Court to continue the injunction in the same terms, Ms Mansoori places particular reliance on the following events which, she says, show the Defendant disclosing or threatening to disclose the private information and/or engaging in harassing conduct:
(1) The incident on 31 December 2024 when, the Claimant alleges, the Defendant showed him a surreptitiously-taken video and photograph showing him naked, and demanded payment of £1 million while threatening to publish the images on social media or to the Claimant's family if he did not pay;
(2) The Defendant's email to the Claimant's solicitor on 27 February 2025, in which she claims to be entitled to thousands of pounds as a result of their marriage, other alleged debts and health expenses and demands these sums to be paid within 7 days, failing which, she says, she will not only bring legal proceedings but will "Report [the Claimant's] actions to social media platforms not as blackmail but as a factual account of my experience and my legal right to warn others";
(3) The Defendant's email of 5 March 2025 to the Claimant's solicitor which repeats the same demands (now setting 13 March 2025 as the date for payment), asserts that the Claimant is dishonestly denying their marriage, and asserts that he has knowingly transmitted a disease to her (attaching her own medical report as "evidence"). This email again threatens legal action but also to "publicly disclose the truth about [the Claimant's] deceit and misconduct, including presenting all documented evidence". This email was cc'd to business associates of the Claimant, as well as a number of media organisations;
(4) The Defendant's email later in March 2025 to the Claimant's solicitor (and again cc-ing the Claimant's business associates and some media organisations) in which she repeats her demands and accusations (now changing the date for payment to 14 March 2025) and threatens, as well as legal action, to "Report his actions publicly as my legal right to warn others";
(5) The Defendant's further email later on the same date (again cc'd to the same third parties) once again threatening that, by 14 March 2025, she would expose the Claimant's actions both to the general public and through legal means;
(6) The Defendant's subsequent email to the Claimant and his solicitor in March 2025 (which, as I have explained, did not in fact reach either of them but was discovered the next day because it was appended to her email the following day), in which she wrote that she had the Claimant's naked pictures and demanded payment and a divorce, failing which she would send the Claimant's naked pictures to his family.
(7) The Defendant's email to the Claimant (cc-ing the usual third parties) the next day in which she wrote that she had deleted (or would delete) the Claimant's naked picture she had previously sent him but referred again to her demands for large sums of money and said that she would send the Claimant's naked pictures to the police rather than to his family. Ms Mansoori characterises this as a withdrawal of the threat to circulate naked pictures on condition that the Claimant pays up.
(8) The 5 social media posts that I have already referred to. The first two (those that the Defendant initially removed when served with the injunction but then reinstated) picture the Claimant and make allegations that the Claimant uses prostitutes and infected the Defendant with a STD. The later 3 posts do not picture or name the Claimant but speak about the Defendant having contracted an STD in terms which, Ms Mansoori says, are targeted at the Claimant and would be understood to refer to him;
(9) The Defendant's communication with the regulatory body that I have already mentioned.
The Defendant's explanation for her behaviour
- All of the behaviour that Ms Mansoori relies upon is well-documented. The Defendant however seeks to cast it in a different light. She did not address every point made against her. The gist of her response was as follows.
- In respect of the naked images, the Defendant says that she has only ever sent one such image, and sent that to the Claimant himself in her email of March 2025 (see [46](6) above). She says she did this in a moment of severe emotional stress in response to just having learned that the Claimant had shared intimate photos of herself with others, and while she was in or about to go to hospital for surgery. She says that her email the following day, sent when she was calmer (see [46](7) above), was an express withdrawal of the threat she had made the previous day to disseminate the naked images.
- In respect of her communications with the Claimant and her demands for money, the Defendant vigorously denies that these amount to blackmail. She says that all her demands are warranted. She relies on the alleged "divorce dowry", agreements said to have been reached with the Claimant, medical costs and expenses, and sums for trauma and damage. In response to Ritchie J's apparent scepticism about the changing amounts that she has been demanding, I understood her to be saying that the total amounts she demanded at different times were made up of different combinations of the above items, and/or that at times she has been prepared to ask for less than she was entitled to, in order to reach a settlement. I did not detect any explanation for why she cc'd the Claimant's business associates and the media, other than because the Claimant was not responding to her demands.
- In respect of her social media posts, the Defendant says that she uses her social media presence to "share aspects of my personal and professional journey" and that her posts are part of her "expressive speech". She also says that her posts are not made for provocation but "as a protective measure in response to ongoing emotional pressure and threats". She explains that she only reinstated the two posts that she removed upon service of the injunction because the Claimant's solicitors had sent her a notice requiring her to preserve evidence for the case and republishing the posts was the only way she knew to achieve that and avoid them being automatically deleted after time. She says that none of the more recent posts that the Claimant complains of are about him. They are telling her own story.
Continuation of the injunction– discussion and conclusions
- I have no doubt that the Claimant will establish at trial that he has a reasonable expectation of privacy in respect of all three classes of information that the injunction protects. As the authorities cited by Ritchie J make clear, naked images, health information and information about sexual relationships are all matters that will normally be regarded as giving rise to a reasonable expectation of privacy. There is nothing to suggest that the Claimant has diluted or waived his privacy rights, for example by publicly disclosing any of this information himself. Some of it has been aired publicly by the Defendant (through her social media posts for example) and cc'd to some third parties, but as the authorities noted by Ritchie J point out, a reasonable expectation of privacy, such as to merit injunctive relief, can endure despite a degree of publicity: "Privacy once broken, cannot be fully regained but it can be further protected" (Ritchie J at [41]).
- When one comes to the balancing exercise at the second stage of the test for misuse of private information, it is likely, in my judgement, that the Claimant's privacy rights will be held to outweigh the rights of the Defendant under ECHR Art 8 and/or 10.
- I have indulged the Defendant by setting out her case on the alleged marriage at some length. Ultimately however, I do not see how it is likely to assist her, even if that case is accepted at trial. It would still not justify the publication of the highly sensitive and private matters that the Claimant seeks to protect. Moreover, as the evidence presently stands, the Claimant would appear to have a strong case that the "marriage" was in fact a contrivance of the Defendant's own making and that thereafter she busied herself with creating apparently credible evidence of it (the messages she made the Claimant send to her sisters, for example, referring to himself as her "husband") in order to exert financial leverage over him in due course. In short, it is likely on present evidence that, in this and other respects, the Defendant has engaged in blackmail, and that her article 10 rights at trial will attract little or no weight.
- Of course, if it transpires at trial that there was some binding financial agreement between the parties which the Claimant has breached, then that may lead the court to reject the term "blackmail" (though there would still be the question of whether the Defendant believed that her menaces were a proper way for her to reinforce her demands), but it would still be very unlikely that the Defendant's rights would be sufficiently strong to outweigh the Claimant's ECHR Art 8 rights.
- As to the allegation that the Claimant knowingly infected the Defendant with an STD, there is no evidence to support this at all at the moment, only the Defendant's conjecture. Her own medical report does not state in terms that she has the STD (only some symptoms that are associated with it); the Claimant's medical reports do not state that he has the STD or suggest that there is any need to investigate whether he may have it; and there is no basis at all for suggesting that the Claimant knows he has it. On present evidence, there is no prospect of some sort of public interest style defence based on this allegation outweighing the Claimant's strong interest in protecting his medical and sexual information.
- As to the "revenge porn" allegation, the evidence so far (including from one of the Defendant's own witnesses) would appear to favour the Claimant's case, i.e. that the pictures he sent were taken from the Defendant's own public social media account and that he sent them to X in order to explain why he was unhappy with how the Defendant was conducting herself online. The Defendant's case that the pictures he in fact sent were explicit images is, for the time being, pure assertion. On present evidence there is therefore no real likelihood of a trial judge finding that the Claimant has behaved as the Defendant alleges, still less that this was sufficient to outweigh his privacy rights or otherwise to justify the refusal of an injunction.
- As to the allegations that the Claimant has engaged in harassment, organising break-ins and vandalism etc, the Defendant herself accepted before me that this is presently speculation on her part. Again, as things presently stand, there is no real likelihood of a Court finding that the Claimant has behaved in a way that would justify the refusal of final injunctive relief.
- The point that counts most strongly in the Defendant's favour at present is the evidence that she does use social media to write about her own life and experiences and to raise awareness of women's issues. An injunction would impinge on those activities and the trial judge – unless they feel able to dismiss this as a blackmailer's pretence – would have to ensure that the interference with these activities, protected under ECHR Art 8 and 10, was proportionate. In McKennitt v Ash [2006] EMLR 10, considering the situation when two people's private lives are intermingled and only one of them wishes to make disclosures, Eady J said at [77]:
"It must follow, in broad terms, that if a person wishes to reveal publicly information about aspects of his or her relations with other people, which would attract the prima facie protection of privacy rights, any such revelation should be crafted, so far as possible, to protect the other person's privacy. This is important particularly, of course, in the context of "kiss and tell" stories. It does not follow, because one can reveal one's own private life, that one can also expose confidential matters in respect of which others are entitled to protection if their consent is not forthcoming."
- Ms Mansoori showed me publications on the Defendant's social media account where the Defendant has been able to express herself at length on the topics that interest her – including her life with (what she believes to be) an STD – without naming or picturing the Claimant or disclosing his own private information. It is plainly possible therefore for her to "craft" her revelations in a way that protects the Claimant's privacy. The trial judge is likely to find that, in these circumstances, the limited interference with the Defendant's own Art 8/Art 10 rights occasioned by a final injunction would be proportionate.
- I turn next to the intended claim in harassment. Again, I am satisfied that, at trial, the Court is likely to find that the Defendant has engaged in a course of conduct amounting to harassment, or would do so if not restrained by a final injunction. The various demands and threats that Miss Mansouri has shown me undoubtedly cross the line between merely unattractive or unreasonable behaviour to conduct that is oppressive, unacceptable, and of an order which would sustain criminal liability under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997, s.2. The Court is likely to find that this was and is calculated to cause the Claimant alarm and distress. The Defendant asserts that what she says, and threatens to publish, is all true. As things presently stand, it seems unlikely that the trial judge will agree but, more importantly, truth or falsity is not determinative in a claim for harassment. As Nicklin J put it in Hayden v Dickenson [2020] EWHC 3291 (QB) at [44](xi), "The fundamental question is whether the conduct has additional elements of oppression, persistence or unpleasantness which are distinct from the content of the statements; if so, the truth of the statements is not necessarily an answer to a claim in harassment." In my judgement, it is likely that, at trial, the Defendant's conduct will be found to have these additional elements and that she knows or ought to know that her conduct has crossed the line into harassment.
- It has been said that, in cases based on journalism, including "citizen journalism", particular regard must be had to the defendant's ECHR Art 10 rights before it is appropriate to qualify their conduct as harassment: "where the alleged harassment is by publication of journalistic material, nothing short of a conscious or negligent abuse of media freedom will justify a finding of harassment. Such cases will be rare and exceptional." : Hayden at [44](xii). Potentially, some of the Defendant's online activities might be called journalistic in nature, but if so, her targeting and shaming of the Claimant online is likely to be regarded as a "conscious or negligent abuse" of her right to freedom of expression rather than a bona fide exercise of her Art 10 rights.
- I do not need to determine whether, as a matter of law, a claimant must experience the effects of the defendant's harassing conduct, and do so in England and Wales, nor precisely what counts as the relevant effect. Ritchie J, at [51], took quite a broad view of what might count as the "impact" of harassment, and was able to find, on that basis, a number of relevant impacts that occurred here even while the Claimant has been abroad. Collins Rice J's description in Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn, might be thought to show a narrower focus on the subjective experiences of the Claimant. In this case, those experiences have occurred abroad since 31 December 2024, when he left the UK.
- Rather than adding to this legal debate, the approach I prefer to take is this: the Claimant in this case is a UK citizen and, on his evidence, he owns a house and runs businesses in England and Wales. He says he will need to return here to attend to his affairs and intends to do so. His return here is therefore not speculative, and when it happens, there is ample evidence that he will continue to experience here the effects of the Defendant's harassing conduct. Therefore, even if the law of harassment requires a claimant to experience the effects of harassment, and to do so in England and Wales, injunctive relief is required to protect the Claimant from the effects of harassment he is likely to endure when he returns. A similar approach has been taken in other harassment claims for injunctive relief where there is an international element. See e.g. Potter v Price [2004] EWHC 781 (QB) at [18]-[19].
- None of the defences under s1(3) of the 1997 Act is likely to assist the Defendant. Although the Defendant is prepared to make serious allegations of criminality against the Claimant, I did not discern her to be asserting that she is pursuing her course of conduct for the purpose of preventing or detecting crime (s1(3)(a)). In any event, a subjective belief that one is acting to prevent or detect crime is insufficient. There is also a basic requirement of rationality. See Hayes v Willoughby [2013] 1 WLR 935 where, at [15], Lord Sumption JSC said:
"Before an alleged harasser can be said to have had the purpose of preventing or detecting crime, he must have sufficiently applied his mind to the matter. He must have thought rationally about the material suggesting the possibility of criminality and formed the view that the conduct said to constitute harassment was appropriate for the purposes of preventing or detecting it"
- The Defendant is free, under the terms of the injunction, to make disclosures to law enforcement agencies. She is highly unlikely to establish that there is a rational connection between the activities the injunction actually prohibits (disclosure of private information to the public and direct or indirect communications with or about the Claimant) and the prevention or detection of crime.
- Section 7(3)(b) does not arise, and I do not consider that there is any real likelihood of the Defendant showing that the pursuit of her course of conduct was reasonable (s7(3)(c)). On the contrary, present evidence suggests that she has pursued it so far for the unreasonable and illegitimate purpose of extracting money from the Claimant to which, on the Claimant's case, she is not entitled.
- I am satisfied therefore that, both in misuse of private information and in harassment, the threshold test in HRA 1998, s12(4) is met. I am also satisfied that an injunction is required. The Defendant clearly remains determined to publicise the Claimant's private information and her allegations about him. She has shown herself willing to disclose, information about the Claimant falling into all three protected categories. I do not read her March 2025 email, sent when the Defendant says she was calmer (see [46](7) above), as an unequivocal withdrawal of her threat that she had previously made to publish the naked images to the Claimant's family. The English is a little hard to follow, but I agree with Ms Mansoori that the withdrawal of the threat seems to be offered on condition of receiving payment. I was not asked to determine whether any of her recent social media posts or her communications with the regulator amounted to breaches of the injunction, but they are at least evidence that she wants to go as far as she can within the current restraints and would go further if those restraints were relaxed. Damages would not be an adequate remedy in this case and the balance of convenience strongly favours the continuation of the injunction until trial.
Destruction/delivery up of the Naked Images of the Claimant
- The Claimant asked me to order that the Defendant provide a list of all the naked images of him that she holds, whether electronically or in hard copy, and then deliver these to the Claimant's solicitor, deleting her own electronic copies. The Claimant's skeleton proposed a mechanism by which the images can be reviewed by the Defendant for the purposes of this litigation if that proves necessary.
- This is a form of mandatory injunction, to which special considerations apply. Chadwick J set out the applicable principles in Nottingham Building Society v Eurodynamics Systems [1993] FSR 468: (1) as the order is being sought at the interlocutory stage, the overriding consideration is which course is likely to involve the least risk of injustice if it turns out to be "wrong"; (2) an order which requires a party to take some positive step at the interlocutory stage may well carry a greater risk of injustice if it turns out to have been wrongly made than an order which merely prohibits action, thereby preserving the status quo; (3) it is legitimate to consider whether the court feels a high degree of assurance that the claimant will be able to establish his right at trial; but (4) even where the court is unable to feel any high degree of assurance that the claimant will establish his right, there may still be circumstances in which it is appropriate to grant a mandatory injunction at an interlocutory stage. Those circumstances will exist where the risk of injustice if this injunction is refused sufficiently outweigh the risk of injustice if it is granted.
- Further guidance was given by Warby LJ (sitting as a Judge of the High Court) in Duchess of Sussex v Associated Newspapers Ltd [2021] EWHC 1245 at [21]:
"Any order should be proportionate to the legitimate aim of ensuring that the means of infringement are removed and put out of harm's way, and to the scale of the risk. It would be wrong to impose onerous obligations for no good reason, and particularly inappropriate to do so in an order that carries with it a threat of proceedings for contempt of court. The order should be tailored to ensure that it does not infringe legal privilege or create a significant obstacle to seeking or obtaining legal advice, or to the pursuit or defence of legal proceedings. And the terms of the order must of course be clear, and easy to understand and apply."
- I do feel a high degree of assurance that the Claimant will establish his privacy rights in these images and obtain final injunctive relief. Naked images are one of the most strongly protected items of information under ECHR Art 8 and there is no suggestion that they have already entered the public domain or that there would be a public interest in that occurring. There is little risk of injustice to the Defendant if the order turns out to be "wrong", because, under its terms, the images can be restored to the Defendant and, meanwhile, she has not suggested that she needs them for any legitimate reason.
- Nevertheless, I had some concerns about the necessity and proportionality of the order sought. After all, the Defendant is bound by the injunction prohibiting her from making any use of the images and she told me repeatedly that she would abide by the injunction if I were to continue it. Ultimately though, I was persuaded to make the order. The Defendant did not in fact resist it: she did not advance any reason for wishing to hold on to the images and she did not indicate that she would have any difficulty complying with the mechanism set out in the order. Ms Mansoori submitted, and I accept, that the Defendant has shown herself to be somewhat unpredictable, and there have already been what can charitably be described as "mishaps" in the shape of the Defendant's posting/re-posting of certain social media items (which I will come to) and sending the printers a link to the hearing bundle. As Ms Mansoori submits, private images cannot be "unseen" or their contents denied once disseminated, so even a risk that this might occur through misjudgement or accident is a risk that needs to be taken seriously.
Deletion of social media posts
- The Claimant invites me to order the removal of 5 social media posts.
- Once again, this is an application for a mandatory injunction and so the special principles I have identified in the preceding section of my judgment apply.
- As I have said, the first two of these posts, which picture the Claimant (clothed) and contain some of the private information about him, were published before Ritchie J granted the injunction, were then removed by the Defendant, but then reinstated by her, purportedly because she thought this was the only way to comply with the preservation notice that the Claimant's solicitors had served on her. Given that they contain the Claimant's sensitive information about his health and sex life, I have a high degree of assurance that he will establish his right to have these images removed at trial.
- I take the same view about the fourth and fifth post. Both of them concern the Defendant's alleged contraction of a STD in terms that make it clear that she contracted it from the person she has recently broken up with and who, in turn, acquired the STD through sexual infidelity. Anyone aware that the Claimant and Defendant had been in some sort of relationship (married or otherwise) is likely to assume that the person referred to is the Claimant and therefore learn his private information, and this looks strongly like conduct that is calculated to cause the Claimant alarm and distress.
- If it transpires at trial that I have assessed these four posts wrongly, the injustice to the Defendant occasioned by having to remove them is limited. They can be restored and, in the meantime, she is free to write about her experience of (allegedly) having an STD, and about women's rights generally, so long as it is done in a way that does not implicate the Claimant as the source of the infection.
- Where I part company with the Claimant is the fourth post. This does make passing reference to STDs, but it is largely an attack on another person with whom the Defendant once had a relationship and she tells me that she blogs frequently about him and her complaints about him. By contrast, it seems to me that even people who knew of the relationship between the Claimant and Defendant would be unlikely to read this as a reference to the Claimant rather than the other person.
- For these reasons, I made the order sought by the Claimant, with the exception of the fourth post.
Access to the Court file
- The Claimant sought an order under CPR 5.4C(2) & (4) restricting access to certain documents held by the Court as part of its records. The prohibition he seeks is not absolute: it simply provides that any request for those documents should be made by way of an application on notice to the parties so that objections can be made if appropriate.
- The Claimant's advisors have been careful to set out the private information he seeks to protect in confidential schedules, and they intend to maintain that approach when they come to file Particulars of Claim and a Reply. So far as it concerns the Claimant's own documents, the order he seeks therefore only restricts access to confidential schedules. (He also seeks a restriction on access to the Court's private judgments).
- The documents the Defendant has filed so far have not distinguished between allegedly private material and material that could properly be disclosed to the public and it may well be that she does not do so when she comes to file her Defence. That is a difficult thing for a litigant in person to do while articulating forcefully the case they want to make, which the Defendant must of course be allowed to do. Accordingly, the formula that the Claimant proposes in respect of documents filed and to be filed by the Defendant is that an on-notice application must be made for access to any such document "unless redacted in advance by agreement with the Claimant so as to remove any information which could lead to the identification of the parties and to protect the Claimant's private information".
- The formula the Claimant has proposed is a sensible one, which goes no further than is strictly necessary to prevent the ordinary operation of the open justice principle defeating the object of these proceedings. I therefore made the order in the terms proposed by the Claimant.
Extension of time for service of Particulars of Claim
- The Claimant sought a modest extension of time for service of the Particulars of Claim until 5 May 2025, indicating that he would agree to a commensurate extension of time for service of the Defence if requested. The reasons given were the fact that taking instructions from the Claimant is not straightforward as he is abroad and English is not his first language, as well as counsel's availability over the Easter vacation. The Defendant did not oppose this application. I therefore granted the application but would observe that the Court expects a claimant who starts a privacy/harassment claim to progress it expeditiously once an interim injunction has been granted. Any further requests for extensions are likely to require careful scrutiny.
