Prince Harry Finally Addresses Diddy Allegations—& How They Affected Meghan Markle
The drama going on with the British Royal Family has always involved the media in one way or another. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have been in the eye of the storm ever since they decided to take a step back from royal duties and move to the United States. And yet, even as rumors swirl about Prince William and Kate Middleton’s marriage, Prince Harry’s marriage has remained steady.
It’s a good thing, considering how many outside issues there are. Reports continue to surface regarding the state of Prince Harry’s relationship with his father, King Charles, and his brother, Prince William. Harry recently gave a bombshell interview where he suggested his father was close to death, and he wanted to repair the relationship while there was still time.
And now, it has surfaced that within Prince Harry’s claim for damages over alleged unlawful behavior at NGN’s newspapers, which was settled in January, there were allegations about the Sun newspaper and its motivations for publishing articles tying Harry with Sean “Diddy” Combs. In the court documents, as reported by The Guardian, Prince Harry claimed the Sun was motivated by revenge when it published a front-page story saying he had been named in a lawsuit accusing Sean “Diddy” Combs of sex trafficking.
Related: Did William really cheat on Kate?
Documents point to this story among a large number of negative articles published by News Group Newspapers (NGN), owned by Rupert Murdoch, “in retaliation” for his claims of unlawful information gathering. And there’s more, as Prince Harry also referred to the way the articles affected both him and his wife, Meghan Markle.
According to Harry, the articles had “a hugely negative impact on his mental health and that of his wife and children”.
NGN’s response was to call the reporting accurate and to claim that “the Sun publishes stories about the Duke of Sussex which are justified because of the role he holds and the actions he has taken.” However, as part of the settlement over unlawful news gathering, NGN apologized for phone hacking at the now defunct News of the World, and “for the serious intrusion by the Sun between 1996 and 2011 into his private life, including incidents of unlawful activities carried out by private investigators working for the Sun”.
The most controversial of the articles pointed at in the documents is a front-page story published in the Sun on March 27, 2024, which claimed Prince Harry had been named in a £24m sex-trafficking lawsuit filed against the US rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs. The article ran under the headline “Harry named in P Diddy sex traffic case” and claimed “bombshell legal filings allege Diddy used Harry’s name to give ‘legitimacy’ to wild parties where ‘serious illegal activity’ took place”.
Four paragraphs in, the story stated that Harry was not accused of any wrongdoing. Prince Harry only crossed paths with Combs once, in 2007 at the end of a memorial concert for his late mother.
Prince Harry also claimed that “NGN has published in the Sun or Sun on Sunday a large number of false and highly derogatory articles about the DoS plainly in retaliation, including articles that suggested he has somehow ‘betrayed’ his family, has ‘lied’ about them to garner sympathy, is a ‘traitor’ to his country and, perhaps most damaging of all, has been named in a high-profile sex-trafficking case.”
The legal documents also claimed that the articles caused such a “strain on his relationship with the royal family that he was forced to leave the institution and relocate to North America, leaving behind all that he knew and held dear.”
If you or someone you know has experienced sexual violence, free and confidential help is available. Call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673.
