The motorsport boss Max Mosley, who is suing the News of the World, for breach of privacy, has defended his lifelong interest in sado-masochistic sex as a harmless pursuit whose practitioners have the same right to privacy as anyone else. The case at the High Court in London, which opened yesterday, could make legal history because Mr Mosley’s lawyers are pushing for “exemplary” damages to deter all newspapers from intruding into people’s sex lives for the titillation of their readers.
“You have to understand that people who do this a lot become very sensitive and bleed very easily and the pain involved in that, compared to all sorts of things, is very modest,” he told the court. “I’d far rather do that than jump into a cold swimming pool. The level of violence is minimal, the drawing of blood a little like cutting yourself shaving.”
News Group Newspapers contests Mr Mosley’s claim for breach of privacy on the grounds that the public had a right to know about the private activities of a prominent figure who presides over one of the world’s most popular spectator sports. A pillar of their defence is the disputed claim that Mr Mosley, whose mother and father were admirers of Adolf Hitler, introduced a Nazi theme into his sexual role-playing.
James Price QC, representing Mosley, said his client’s interest in S&M was not degrading or sick, and accused the News of the World of being out of touch with modern life. “It’s not a surprise to me or to others who don’t live in an ivory tower or a monastery, or, I am sure, to your lordship, to learn that quite a lot of people, men and women, have a fascinated interest in this sort of thing,” he told the judge, Mr Justice Eady.
Price said there was no evidence that the roleplays had any Nazi overtones. “If the newspaper was hoping to get pictures of the claimant doing a Nazi salute or saying ‘Sieg heil!’ or dressing in the uniform of a concentration camp commandant - which we know they were - they were to be completely disappointed,” he said.
He added: “This trial is not a forum for debating the evils or otherwise of Sir Oswald Mosley. The sins of the father cannot justifiably be visited upon the son, who was born at a time when the British Union of Fascists was simply a memory and when Britain was already at war with Nazi Germany.”
Mosley said he could think of “few things more unerotic than Nazi roleplay”, particularly because of the special “associations” it held for him. Asked by the newspaper’s counsel what he meant, he said: “All my life, I have had hanging over me my antecedents, my parents, and the last thing I want to do in some sexual context is be reminded of it.”
Mr Mosley told the judge he considered those involved had enjoyed it, adding that there had been no brutality.
“I think it is a perfectly harmless activity provided it is between consenting adults who want to do it, are of sound mind, and it is in private,” he said.
He also revealed that neither his wife of 48 years nor sons knew about his interest in sado-masochism until the News of the World article.
“She never knew of this aspect of my life, so that headline in the newspaper was completely, totally devastating for her,” he said, adding he could think of “nothing more undignified or humiliating” for his sons.
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