UK singer gets $951,000 in Murdoch hacking case

[February 27, 2012]  LONDON (AP) -- Charlotte Church, who told a media inquiry of being hounded by Rupert Murdoch's journalists when she was a teen singing sensation, received 600,000 pounds ($951,000) Monday in a settlement from News International and said she had been sickened by what she learned about intrusion into her private life.

Church was present at London's High Court for the reading of a statement resolving her claim that 33 articles in the now defunct News of the World tabloid were the product of journalists illegally hacking into her family's voice mails.

Outside court, Church said: "What I have discovered as the litigation has gone on has sickened and disgusted me. Nothing was deemed off limits by those who pursued me and my family, just to make money for a multinational news corporation."

The settlement to Church includes 300,000 pounds ($476,000) in legal costs and a public apology but Church said she did not believe News International's apology was sincere.

"I have also discovered that despite the apology which the newspaper has just given in court, these people were prepared to go to any lengths to prevent me exposing their behavior," she said.

She added: "They are not truly sorry. They are just sorry they got caught."

Lawyers for Church, 26, and her parents, James and Maria, confirmed that terms had been agreed with News of the World publisher News Group Newspapers.

News International, a division of Murdoch's News Corp., has tried hard to keep phone hacking cases from going to trial. It has launched its own compensation program, overseen by a respected former judge, and has paid out millions in out-of-court settlements for about 60 cases including one brought by actor Jude Law, comedian Steve Coogan, former soccer star Paul Gascoigne and actress Sienna Miller.

Judge Geoffrey Vos has said News International had made "superhuman efforts to settle every case."

The lawsuits stem from revelations of phone-hacking and other illegal tactics at the News of the World, where journalists routinely intercepted voice mails of those in the public eye in a relentless search for scoops.

Murdoch closed the 168-year-old tabloid in July amid a wave of public revulsion over its 2002 interception of voice mails belonging to a missing 13-year-old girl, Milly Dowler, who was later found murdered. Murdoch and his company paid millions to the Dowler family.

The scandal has spawned three parallel police investigations and a U.K. judge-led inquiry into media ethics, where Church spoke of the intense, often overwhelming, media intrusion into her family's private life.

[Associated Press; By RAPHAEL SATTER]

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