LONDON — The ingredients are explosive: an affluent Englishman, a handful of dominatrices, a tabloid newspaper and allegations of Nazi role-play.
After a week that combined courtroom drama and British sex farce, a judge will rule on the nature of sadomasochistic sessions involving five women and Max Mosley, president of the organization that oversees Formula One racing.
Were they depraved acts by a powerful public figure, or private sexual encounters shamefully exposed by a prurient press?
Mosley is suing the News of the World newspaper for invasion of privacy over a story alleging he attended a five-hour Nazi-themed sex session.
The newspaper argues that Mosley’s public profile and “depraved” behavior make the story a matter of public interest. Summing up the paper’s defense case Monday, lawyer Mark Warby said the issue at stake was “the fundamental importance in a democratic society of a free press — a free press which may say things which shock and offend.”
The hearing ended Monday, and Judge David Eady said he hoped to give his ruling next week. Whatever he decides will have huge implications for Britons’ right to privacy — and the media’s freedom to publish.
“It’s advancing the interpretation of the balance to be struck between respect for individuals’ private and family life and the right to freedom of expression,” said Caroline Kean, a partner at media-law specialists Wiggin. She is not involved in the case.
Britain has no formal privacy law, but it is a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees the right to respect for privacy and family life. Celebrities have increasingly used this clause to fight media exposes.
In 2004, Naomi Campbell won a privacy case against the Daily Mirror newspaper over a story that included pictures of her leaving a Narcotics Anonymous meeting. The next year, Canadian musician Loreena McKennitt won a privacy suit against a former friend who had published a book about her. The court ruled that information about her feelings and relationships was private and should be removed.
The judge in that case, and in several other high-profile privacy suits, was Eady, the justice presiding in the Mosley case.
For the past week, Eady and a packed courtroom of lawyers, journalists and curious onlookers have watched as the sights and sounds of sadomasochism filled Court 13 at London’s neo-Gothic High Court.
The court heard evidence from Mosley and four of the women he met for S&M sessions at an apartment Mosley rented for the purpose — at a cost of $70,000 a year — in London’s affluent Chelsea neighborhood.
Lawyers also played covertly recorded videos that showed Mosley being bound and whipped, then relaxing naked with a cup of tea.
The News of the World claims the session, secretly filmed by one of the women involved, had a Nazi theme.
Mosley, 68, has admitted a 45-year long interest in S&M, but told the court he found the idea of Nazi sex fantasies abhorrent. The issue is especially sensitive because he is the son of the late Oswald Mosley, Britain’s best-known fascist politician in the 1930s and a friend of Adolf Hitler.
He said he and the women acted out a German prison scenario, with no overtones of the Third Reich.
The two sides have given widely differing views of sadomasochistic role-play. Mosley referred to his encounters with the women as parties, rather than orgies. One of the women involved compared the activities to “children playing Cowboys and Indians.”
But Warby said attempts to portray the events as “a bit of hanky-spanky” were misleading.
In fact, he said, “there is psychological darkness” behind such activities. “There is, we suggest, true depravity.
“This is certainly not Cowboys and Indians,” he said. “This was not the naughty schoolgirl scenario. This was not the doctors and nurses scenario. This was vicious.”
After the story broke in March, Mosley faced calls to quit as president of the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile, which oversees Formula One racing. Despite the pressure, he won a confidence vote last month allowing him to stay until his fourth term ends in October 2009.
Most legal observers expect Mosley to win his legal case as well, further consolidating Britain’s privacy rights. Mark Thomson, a media-law specialist at the law firm Carter-Ruck, said an equally significant factor would be the size of any damages awarded by the judge.
Mosley’s lawyers are demanding the tabloid pay large punitive damages to discourage similar stories. He said damages have so far been limited to $10,000 to $12,000. If that happens in this case as well, Thomson said, “it’s obvious that tabloids will continue to publish and be damned.”
Conversely, Kean said, “if he chooses to make a very significant order, say half a million pounds ($1 million), there is a danger that it will have a chilling effect on the press.”
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