Court is told Coleen sent viral ‘wagatha christie’ post ‘as last resort’ (2/2)
Asked what she set out to achieve with the widely shared post, Mrs Rooney replied: “I wasn’t achieving anything, what I wanted was to stop the person who was leaking my private information to The Sun.”
Mrs Rooney added that she had given out warnings “many times”, but “it didn’t stop”.
“This was my last resort,” she continued.
Mr Tomlinson suggested that Mrs Rooney must have known that the social media post would have led to abuse of Mrs Vardy, to which she replied: “No, that was not my intention at all, not at all,” adding: “It’s not in my nature to.”
The footballer’s wife was watched as she gave evidence by her husband Wayne, with Mrs Vardy sitting on the other side of the courtroom.
Mrs Rooney’s post was widely shared and heavily parodied on social media at the time, including by the Twitter account of Jeremy Corbyn, then-leader of the Labour Party.
She told the court that she was surprised by “how much interest” her social media post caused.
“Obviously it was going to get picked up by the media,” she said, explaining that her life had been covered by the media for the last 20 years “no matter how big or small” something was.
Asked by Mr Tomlinson if she had a “large loyal following” on social media, Mrs Rooney replied: “I have a large following, yes – loyal, I’m not too sure about.”
