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Post by Admin on Sept 11, 2014 21:40:18 GMT
One of the Australian DJs who made a prank call to the hospital where the Duchess of Cambridge was being treated during her first pregnancy has arrived at the inquest of a nurse whose death has been linked to the hoax. Mel Greig is not due to give evidence but said in a tweet today that she was prepared to answer questions "on or off the stand".  Jacintha Saldanha, 46, was found dead in her staff housing shortly after staff were tricked into revealing details of Kate's stay at London's King Edward VII Hospital in December 2012. Kate was being treated for acute morning sickness at the time. Miss Greig tweeted: "I made a commitment to the Saldanha family that I would answer any questions they have, on or off the stand, I'm here to uphold that promise." She has previously spoken of the backlash she received in the months following the death of the mother of two, Including death threats.  The family of Ms Saldanha, including her widower Benedict Barboza and her two teenage children Lisha and Junal have also arrived at the Royal Courts of Justice for the first day of the inquest. Mrs Saldanha was the first nurse to answer a call by Australian DJs Greig and Michael Christian, who pretended to be the Queen and Prince Philip for an on-air prank. She passed them on to a second nurse on Kate's ward, who was duped into giving out details of her medical condition. Mrs Saldanha's body was found hanging on December 7 2012 - three days after she took the call.  In a statement read out by the coroner, another nurse, Araceli Articlave, said Mrs Saldanha was in charge of the hospital that night and felt responsible for the incident. "She came to me on the ward and told me she had received a call from somebody saying she was the Queen. Jacintha believed it was a genuine call and she put it through to the duty nurse. She was worrying that she had put the call through. Jacintha told me she was very upset and felt it was her fault," she added. |
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Post by Admin on Oct 16, 2014 22:50:16 GMT
One of the Australian DJs who made a prank call to the hospital where the Duchess of Cambridge was being treated during her first pregnancy has insisted she is not looking to launch a media career in the UK. Mel Greig, who posed as the Queen during the call in which private medical information about Kate was disclosed, said on Loose Women she had not considered the possibility of working over here before being asked about it recently.  The death of nurse Jacintha Saldanha, 46, who put through the 2012 call and hanged herself three days later after the stunt made headlines around the world. “I hadn’t considered it before,” said Greig when asked about whether her future may lie in Britain. No offence to Londoners but I expected this to be a horrible place - people with pitchforks, at the airports, waiting to get me. I had this vision that the UK hated me. For months, all I would do was read online that, ‘you deserve to die’, ‘we hate you’, ‘don’t come here’ - and I believed it all. After arriving, I saw how beautiful it is here. And that was the first time when someone asked me [about working in Britain]. Well if the opportunity came up, why wouldn’t I?” Pressed further by panellist Janet Street-Porter about whether it may be easier to work in Britain rather than Australia, Greig replied: “No, not at all. Why would it be easier? This is where it happened.” “Absolutely not,” she replied, adamantly. Greig also said she had vowed to apologise to face to face with Mrs Saldanha’s family. “I made a promise to the Saldanha family that I would answer any questions they had and the right forum for that was at the inquest,” she said. “The opportunity came up to apologise face to face and I think that’s the way you should do it, not through a letter, not through the media.”  Revealing that she had been suffering from a deep depression since the incident, Greig also claimed her apology had been accepted. “When I made eye contact with the family, they were looking directly at me and I could see they wanted that apology. They accepted that apology and that means a lot to both of us." |
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Post by Admin on Dec 7, 2014 22:51:44 GMT
 Prince William wrote to the family of a nurse who killed herself following a hoax call about his wife's condition when she gave birth to their son. The Duke of Cambridge said Jacintha Saldanha's death was "unbelievably sad" and offered the couple's "deepest condolences". The handwritten note added: "We were both very shocked to hear about Jacintha and have been thinking about her a lot recently. Many of the nurses spoke highly of her and I'm sure you know how great a nurse she was. "Jacintha and her colleagues looked after us extremely well and I am just so sorry that someone who cared for others so much found themselves in such a desperate situation." An inquest ruled Ms Saldanha's took her own life after the prank by Australian radio DJs Mel Greig and Michael Christian. Grieg has since apologised in public to the family and said she was "disgusted with herself". But Ms Saldanha's husband Ben Barboza said he could never forgive her. He told the Mail on Sunday: "I am just really angry, why did they do that? Just a matter of three or four seconds changed our whole life. I can't forgive the people who broadcast that." "It was the humiliation she felt, and the guilt. I go over that in my mind, over and over. She didn't want me to know, to share that humiliation," he added.  |
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