Rebekah Vardy feels ‘let down by legal system’ after losing libel battle

Rebekah Vardy has said she feels “let down by the legal system”, and has again denied leaking stories about Coleen Rooney to tabloids, following her loss of a libel battle at the high court.

Vardy said she believed she was suffering from PTSD after losing the case and she now had a full-time security chief at her home in Leicestershire after receiving 100 abusive messages a day.

Speaking to the Sun, Vardy said: “The whole thing has been awful. At its worst, I was worried to be on my own, to leave the house. I was scared to be out in public places. Even the smallest things, like going shopping, were horrendous.”

She added: “Everyone always says: ‘These people wouldn’t say things to your face’, but actually you do get the odd few that go that extra mile. The abuse I was getting was insane. I was linked to the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, people suggesting I was a member of IS, stuff like that. It was as if I’d murdered someone.”

Vardy has reasserted her claim that she never leaked stories about Rooney to the tabloids. In the high court judgment issued on Friday regarding the libel case, the judge concluded that Vardy most likely worked with her agent, Caroline Watt, to leak stories from Rooney’s private Instagram account to the Sun. The accusation came from Rooney in October 2019, who accused Vardy of leaking false stories about her private life to the media.

In a clip of an interview with TalkTV, Vardy said: “I will say that ‘til I’m blue in the face. I did not do it.” She now faces a large legal bill, which is reportedly around £3m, after deciding to pursue the case to trial.

Vardy, who is married to the Leicester City footballer Jamie Vardy, also accused Rooney of “weaponising” her fan-base during the trial. She said Rooney’s decision to accuse her publicly was “sinister”, and that she initially thought it was “not real”.

Vardy said she confronted Rooney by phone about her original accusation. She said: “I picked up the phone and I called her and basically said: ‘What the fuck is this?’ and her response was quite, I don’t know, quite rude, quite harsh.”

She added: “She basically just said: ‘You know what this is.’ And at that point, I really didn’t know what it was.”