The trial is the culmination of a two-and-a-half-year battle between the two media personalities.
A court has heard that Rebekah Vardy was told her baby should be “put in an incinerator” after she was publicly accused by Coleen Rooney of leaking stories to the press about her private life on the first day of the so-called ‘Wagatha Christie’ trial.
Vardy is suing Rooney for libel after she publicly accused her of leaking stories to The Sun.
On Tuesday, the long-awaited trial got underway and the court heard some of the abuse and hate Vardy was on the receiving end of after Rooney’s public accusation on social media.
Vardy’s lawyer, Hugh Tomlinson said the case has been “profoundly distressing and disturbing” and she needed to “clear her name through this case, so she can move on from this terrible episode.”
Tomlinson said that because of Rooney’s post, which took social media by storm, Vardy had been subjected to horrible abuse – including one message calling her an “evil rat-faced b***h” and another saying she should die and her baby should be “put in an incinerator.”
Vardy had been seven-months pregnant with her and her husband Jamie’s third child at the time of Rooney’s accusation.
In October 2019, Rooney, the wife of former England star Wayne, carried out a months-long “sting operation” in which she posted fake stories on her personal Instagram page which she believed only Vardy could see.
She later accused Vardy, the wife of Leicester City striker Jamie, of being the culprit when these fake stories were leaked to the press.
This has been a burden in my life for a few years now and finally I have got to the bottom of it…… pic.twitter.com/0YqJAoXuK1
— Coleen Rooney (@ColeenRoo) October 9, 2019
The 39-year-old denies the allegations.
The incident was jokingly coined ‘Wagatha Christie,’ online – a play on the slang term ‘WAG’ ie wives and girlfriends of footballers – and best-selling crime author Agatha Christie.
https://twitter.com/RebekahVardy/status/1181871914081509376?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1181871914081509376%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.joe.co.uk%2Fnews%2Fcoleen-rooney-rebekah-vardy-decsion-317107
Last month, Rooney was refused permission to bring the case against Vardy’s agent instead of her.
Rooney’s lawyers previously claimed that Vardy had leaked information to The Sun either directly or through her agent Caroline Watt and pursued her for misuse of private information.
The trial will be decided by a judge, not a jury, and is set to run for seven days, the BBC reports.
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