Five women who raised concerns online alleging that the singer/rapper Jonny Fox is a “sexual predator” and emotionally abusive are facing a multiple libel claim of up to £60,000, court documents show.
The case, which has reached the high court, is an example of the clash between Britain’s defamation laws and the MeToo movement.
Fox, lead vocalist and founding member of the punk-rock band the King Blues, who is commonly known by the stage name “Itch”, alleges that the women have individually, and as a group, engaged in a “persistent campaign of harassment” spreading lies about him in a series of online articles published in 2016. He denies all the accusations.
Started in 2004, Fox evolved the King Blues from a solo project to a hip-hop-influenced punk band. The group released four albums and received endorsements from the British chart-topping punk group Enter Shikari and Radio 1 before announcing their split in 2012.
Fox produced a solo album in 2014 before starting a new version of the King Blues in 2016. Since regrouping, the five-piece have performed at festivals including Reading and Leeds, Download and Reeperbahn in Germany. They are known for their political lyrics and engagement.
According to court claims seen by the Guardian, the women he is suing variously sent him a “menacing photograph and message”, contacted his current partner about the claims, staged a protest at the band’s performance and encouraged “militant” action against Fox.
In the articles Fox was described as a “sexual predator”, “domestic abuser” and someone who turned “the feminism he raps about into a joke”.
Lawyers for Fox say the comments and actions amounted to a “campaign of harassment” that was calculated to “cause as much damage as possible to the claimant’s [Fox’s] reputation and music career”.
At a preliminary hearing in the high court last Tuesday, Julian Santos, counsel for Fox, told the court that “intimate photos” of his client had been uploaded on social media without his permission. “While these delays [to the case] are experienced, the blogs remain online,” he added.
The judge, Mr Justice Julian Knowles, agreed that: “They are incredibly serious accusations. They have the potential to be immensely damaging.”
After the hearing Tamsin Allen, a solicitor at Bindmans law firm who represents three of the defendants, said: “The women all say they are speaking the truth and doing so to protect other people. There was no organised campaign: some of them had never met each other before the case.
“The women felt it was in the public interest for them to speak out to warn vulnerable young women. That’s why they have called their fundraising campaign ‘Solidarity not Silence’. They feel this claim is an attempt to silence them.”
The court claims say that, at one concert, a group of 10 protesters hoisted banners declaring: “Itch: Stop your abuse of women” and “Call it out”. They were eventually escorted out by security guards.
The documents also show a petition was started in order to pressure the 2000trees music festival to drop Fox’s band from its lineup. At the Glastonwick festival in June 2016, one of the defendants, who is a musician, is said to have a delivered a “seriously defamatory speech” about him. That speech was then broadcast in a YouTube video.
The articles or blogs amount to defamation, Fox’s lawyers said, because they contain false allegations, for example, that he preyed on “vulnerable and traumatised women”, often those much younger than him, and that he kicked a pregnant partner in her abdomen. Another, it is claimed, falsely suggested he suffered from “sex and womanising addictions”.
As a result of the damaging claims, it is said, the band’s promotional campaigns have been cut back and delayed. The women’s action, Fox’s lawyers said, “held itself out as a legitimate campaign to protect women whereas it’s true purpose was to cause as much damage as possible to [his] reputation and as much distress and anxiety as possible”.
Fox has initiated legal action seeking aggravated damages for libel. He also wants an injunction preventing further publication of the allegations.
There were originally six defendants. One woman has now settled. The sixth defendant, a former partner of Fox, argues that she now suffers from mental health problems, and has not responded to the claim. The judge is due to deliver a decision on whether a default judgment previously entered against her should be withdrawn on the grounds of her incapacity.
At the hearing, the sixth defendant was represented by barrister Zoe McCallum, acting pro bono, who said her client had been too unwell to submit evidence countering the claim but would do so. Santos, for Fox, told the court that she had already been given extra time to respond.
The first defendant, Hannah Wiggins, a musician and artist, is a former member of the King Blues band and is also a member of the anarcho-dub punk band Autonomads. In her defence she denies harassing Fox or taking part in any campaign against him and points out that she did not write any blog. She says when she left the King Blues band there was “no ill will”.
The second defendant, Ren Aldridge, is lead singer of a feminist punk band the Petrol Girls. She also denies engaging individually or collectively in a campaign of harassment. In her defence she admits publishing a blog but said she considered it necessary to warn women who may come in contact with Fox about his “patterns of abusive and inappropriate behaviour towards women”.
The third defendant, Nadia Javed, is a member of a three-woman feminist band, the Tuts. She also denies engaging in a campaign of harassment on her own or collectively. In her defence, she said, the information she had gathered from friends “demonstrated that the claimant posed a clear risk to women, and in particular young women, which [she and her band] reasonably considered, needed to be publicised”.
The fourth defendant has now settled the case. The fifth, anonymous defendant, is another former partner of Fox. In her defence, she alleges that he sexually and emotionally abused her. She also denies engaging in a campaign of harassment.
A date for the substantive trial of the libel claim has not yet been set.