Web sleuths tracked her down after watching Child Reindeer and now Fiona Harvey’s felony file—or seemingly lack thereof—has been the subject of dialog. The “actual Martha” stated she was compelled to defend herself after receiving loss of life threats and now she’s suing Netflix for defamation.
Comic and actor Richard Gadd conceptualized Child Reindeer after a girl 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 tablets, 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 state of affairs affected his profession and private life.
Whereas Gadd by no means named the folks his characters are primarily based on, it didn’t take lengthy for the web neighborhood to determine 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 assume 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 folks may very well be. That’s not the purpose of our present.”
Fiona Harvey‘s felony file, 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 doubt come into query in court docket. Right here’s the newest on this drama.
Does Fiona Harvey have a felony file?
Opposite to what’s depicted on the present, Harvey claims she doesn’t have a felony file and that’s why she’s suing Netflix for its defamatory illustration of her (extra on that beneath). In Child Reindeer, Martha (supposedly primarily based 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 fully unfaithful, very, very defamatory to me, very profession damaging.”
That is harder to fact-check within the UK than it’s within the US. Within the UK, felony information are publicly out there and the felony information workplace has information of each arrest, cost, warning, and conviction. Nonetheless, the Human Rights Act states that felony information will not be publicly viewable until launched by the courts. The Freedom of Data Act permits people to request details about the felony justice system from public authorities, together with prisons and police forces, however the info could also be exempt.
On June 7, 2024, information broke of her lawsuit towards the world’s largest streaming service—she’s searching for $170 million in damages. “The lies that Defendants advised about Harvey to over 50 million folks worldwide embody 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 advised 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, “Because of Defendants’ lies, malfeasance, and completely reckless misconduct, Harvey’s life had been ruined. Merely, Netflix and Gadd destroyed her status, her character and her life.”
An interview Harvey did with Piers Morgan in mid-Could 2024 acquired a powerful 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 may need invited us to take a position 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 carefully 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 supply 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 in regards to the Netflix sequence Child Reindeer and, particularly, the obligation of care because of the girl now recognized as Martha from the sequence. You advised 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 up to now been unable to discover a file of the conviction to which you referred.”
For extra on Child Reindeer, try Richard Gadd’s e-book
and play that impressed the Netflix sequence. The script, which gained 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 chortle. 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…”
