Web sleuths tracked her down after watching Child Reindeer and now Fiona Harvey’s prison report—or seemingly lack thereof—has been the subject of dialog. The “actual Martha” stated she was pressured to defend herself after receiving demise threats and now she’s suing Netflix for defamation.
Comic and actor Richard Gadd conceptualized Child Reindeer after a lady despatched him 41,071 emails, 350 hours’ value of voicemails, 744 tweets, 46 Fb messages, 106 pages of letters, and a wide range of bizarre items, together with a reindeer toy, sleeping capsules, a woolly hat and boxer shorts over the course of 4 years. It started as a one-man present on the Edinburgh Fringe and it bought picked up by Netflix started and Gadd as a fictionalized model of himself named Donny Dunn. The present explores his traumas and the way the scenario affected his profession and private life.
Whereas Gadd by no means named the individuals his characters are based mostly on, it didn’t take lengthy for the net neighborhood to establish Harvey because the “Actual Martha”, regardless of Gadd telling GQ that “we’ve gone to such nice lengths to disguise her to the purpose that I don’t suppose she would acknowledge herself. What’s been borrowed is an emotional reality, not a fact-by-fact profile of somebody.” In response to all of the hypothesis, Gadd himself tweeted: “Please don’t speculate on who any of the true life individuals may very well be. That’s not the purpose of our present.”
Fiona Harvey‘s prison report, whether or not she even has one, was hotly debated by viewers on-line after she was interviewed on Uncensored With Piers Morgan and can little question come into query in courtroom. Right here’s the newest on this drama.
Does Fiona Harvey have a prison report?
Opposite to what’s depicted on the present, Harvey claims she doesn’t have a prison report and that’s why she’s suing Netflix for its defamatory illustration of her (extra on that under). In Child Reindeer, Martha (supposedly based mostly on Harvey) is proven to be arrested, pleading responsible, and spending 9 months in jail. Donny (the fictionalized Gadd) is granted a five-year restraining order and he allegedly by no means sees her once more.
Talking with controversial TV host Piers Morgan, Harvey refuted a lot of what was depicted in Child Reindeer. “They’ve billed it as a real story, and so has he, and it’s not,” she stated. “He’s mendacity and they’re mendacity.” When it got here to her being arrested, charged, or convicted of any crime, she stated, “That’s utterly unfaithful, very, very defamatory to me, very profession damaging.”
That is tougher to fact-check within the UK than it’s within the US. Within the UK, prison data are publicly obtainable and the prison data workplace has data of each arrest, cost, warning, and conviction. Nevertheless, the Human Rights Act states that prison data usually are not publicly viewable until launched by the courts. The Freedom of Data Act permits people to request details about the prison justice system from public authorities, together with prisons and police forces, however the data could also be exempt.
On June 7, 2024, information broke of her lawsuit towards the world’s largest streaming service—she’s in search of $170 million in damages. “The lies that Defendants instructed about Harvey to over 50 million individuals worldwide embrace that Harvey is a twice-convicted stalker who was sentenced to 5 years in jail and that Harvey sexually assaulted Gadd,” her criticism says. “Defendants instructed these lies, and by no means stopped, as a result of it was a greater story than the reality, and higher tales made cash.”
The lawsuit continues, “On account of Defendants’ lies, malfeasance, and totally reckless misconduct, Harvey’s life had been ruined. Merely, Netflix and Gadd destroyed her repute, her character and her life.”
An interview Harvey did with Piers Morgan in mid-Might 2024 obtained a robust response from the general public, with many within the feedback part doubting the legitimacy of her story. Others have been disturbed by “Piers Morgan conducting one of the vital unethical interviews ever.”
“By promising viewers a real story, and by doing such a shoddy job of masking Harvey’s identification, Child Reindeer might need invited us to invest on what actually occurred,” argued The Guardian‘s Stewart Heritage. “However this has made us complicit. We’re following Fiona Harvey’s story simply as intently as we adopted the sequence itself. Child Reindeer is shaping as much as be a lesson in what occurs if everybody—writers, producers, the media, viewers—comply with their worst instincts at each flip.”
The Guardian reported a number of days later that an MP has requested Netflix to offer proof that the lady who impressed the character Martha Scott in Child Reindeer is a “convicted stalker” because the present would have us imagine.
In a letter shared on X, the Ochil and South Perthshire MP wrote: “I requested you concerning the Netflix sequence Child Reindeer and, particularly, the responsibility of care because of the lady now recognized as Martha from the sequence. You instructed me the next: ‘[Baby Reindeer] is clearly the true story of the horrific abuse that the author […] suffered, by the hands of a convicted stalker. … Journalists have to date been unable to discover a report of the conviction to which you referred.”
For extra on Child Reindeer, take a look at Richard Gadd’s e-book
and play that impressed the Netflix sequence. The script, which received an Olivier Award in 2020, “is described as a chilling story about obsession, delusion and the terrifying ramifications of a fleeting mistake.” Gadd writes in Child Reindeer, “I checked out her, wanting her to chuckle. Wanting her to share within the joke. However she didn’t. She simply stared. I knew then, in that second – that she had taken it actually…”
