'One article nearly killed me' - Leeds mum wins Mail on Sunday libel case

Danielle Hindley said she found faith during her ordeal after the Mail on Sunday published a libellous article describing her as a “rogue” beautician in December 2017.

However, the mum from Kippax has warned that there are many more cases like hers where people attacked by tabloid newspapers “will take their own life and nobody will know why”.

The conclusion of the case comes less than two weeks after bullying from tabloids was alleged to have contributed to the death of television presenter Caroline Flack, who died by suicide at her home on 15 February.

Ms Hindley said: “This is going to continue to happen to people.

“One article nearly killed me. There’s only so much a human can take. It took something away from me that I don’t think I’ll ever get back.”

The nightmare began after a former client complained about a treatment Ms Hindley had carried out. The customer tried to take Ms Hindley to trading standards, which dismissed her, and then threatened to go to the papers.

Ms Hindley said at the time she was not worried because she assumed the journalist would check the story.

A undercover Mail on Sunday reporter came to her home, where Ms Hindley works, and recorded secret footage. The reporter had told Ms Hindley that she was allergic to one of the products but tried to persuade the beautician to apply it anyway, she said. Ms Hindley could not carry out the treatment and sent her away after an hour and a half, refusing payment.

A few weeks later she was contacted by a reporter listing false allegations about her and asking her to respond. Ms Hindley denied the allegations but, regardless, many of them went into print.

She said: “Running up to the publication I was really anxious. I’d already been put on antidepressants and was scared in my own home. I’d stopped working because I was so anxious.

“When it was published the trolling was so bad from other beauticians and people who used to bully me at school. Anytime I went online someone had tagged me in a picture or a post.”

Ms Hindley approached the press regulator IPSO, which asked for evidence. She said the regulator took her case seriously and got her a correction, which was supposed to appear on page two of the newspaper and appeared on page eight because “they said they had a more important story about Harry and Megan”.

She believes the regulator was soft on the newspaper, giving it more time to gather evidence and extensions to deadlines, while she was given a week to sort through 3,000 screenshots to find the evidence they needed.

Though she got a correction she “couldn’t move on” until she sued the newspaper for damages as she felt that nobody had seen the correction and people still believed she was guilty of the allegations in the article.

“Over a year after the correction, it was still affecting me. It was so difficult to get people to believe me. People would say, ‘it’s in a national newspaper, they can’t make it up’.”

Ms Hindley was unable to take any action against the woman who initially approached the newspaper as the woman was diagnosed with schizophrenia.

“I don’t forgive her but I believe she, too, was a victim of the Daily Mail,” Ms Hindley said.

In June 2019, Associated Newspapers, the owner of the Mail on Sunday, agreed to pay damages, which were awarded at the Royal Courts of Justice on Tuesday.

She said: “I was lucky to be one of the few normal people to have got justice against a big newspaper. It’s almost impossible and I’ve been so lucky, to the point where I now believe in God, when I didn’t before.

“The amount I accepted from the Mail is a life-changing amount. I didn’t do it for the money but to clear my name.”

Ms Hindley has organised an event outside Leeds Town Hall at 2pm on Sunday 1 March where women are asked to wear black to pay tribute to Ms Flack and raise awareness of mental health issues.

Her business, Dolly’s Nails, Hair and Beauty, is once again thriving and she also teaches three nights a week.

Ms Hindley has spent some of her payout on training to reconstruct nipples for women who have suffered breast cancer and had a mastectomy, which she now offers free of charge as a way of “paying it forward”, she said.

“Before now I could never justify paying for [the training] but it’s something I’m doing for myself and to help others.”

“It will help me heal,” she added.