Teal Swan v Associated Newspapers Ltd

JurisdictionEngland & Wales
JudgeMr Justice Warby
Judgment Date22 May 2020
Neutral Citation[2020] EWHC 1312 (QB)
Date22 May 2020
Docket NumberCase No: QB-2019-000846
CourtQueen's Bench Division
Between:
Teal Swan
Claimant
and
Associated Newspapers Ltd
Defendant

[2020] EWHC 1312 (QB)

Before:

Mr Justice Warby

Case No: QB-2019-000846

IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE

QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION

MEDIA AND COMMUNICATIONS LIST

Royal Courts of Justice

Strand, London, WC2A 2LL

David Hirst (instructed by Pinder Reaux & Associates Ltd) for the Claimant

David Glen (instructed by ACK Media Law) for the Defendant

Hearing date: 18 May 2020

Approved Judgment

Mr Justice Warby
1

The claimant brings this libel action in respect of an article (“the Article”) published in MailOnline, on the website www.dailymail.co.uk (“the Daily Mail website”) on 11 March 2018, and made accessible ever since that date, via the Daily Mail website and links to it on the Daily Mail Facebook and Daily Mail Australia Facebook pages.

2

This has been the trial of preliminary issues in the action, pursuant to an Order of Julian Knowles J, dated 28 February 2020. As is commonplace, and appropriate, it has taken place before service of any Defence.

The parties

3

The Particulars of Claim describe the claimant as “a US-based modern day spiritualist who writes, broadcasts and presents talks and workshops around the world based upon her own modern spiritual beliefs”, at the core of whose mission as a spiritualist is “to inspire people to experience a greater sense of freedom, joy and personal authenticity and to suppress social conformity and pretension”.

4

The defendant is the publisher of the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday, and maintains the Daily Mail website, via which MailOnline is published. The claimant also attributes to the defendant responsibility for the operation of the two Facebook pages. I am not clear if that is disputed, but in any event it is not an issue for today.

The Article

5

The Article, attributed to “Dailymail.com reporter”, carried the following main headline and sub-headlines:

Meet the glamorous American cult leader nicknamed the Gucci Guru who claims she's part alien and destined for world domination as followers flock to her Costa Rican jungle hideout

• Teal Swan is an American cult leader who prefers tight skirts and stilettos to robes

• She lives in Costa Rica, where people from all over flock to attend her workshops

• Swan once convinced a follower he had been ‘brutally sodomized’ by a gray alien

• Also claimed she was sewed into a corpse while being abused in a cult as a child

6

The claim relies on the headlines and on the full text of the Article, the remainder of which is set out below, with paragraph numbers added for ease of reference.

By DAILYMAIL.COM REPORTER

PUBLISHED: 02:44, 11 March 2018 | UPDATED: 09:21, 11 March 2018

[1] She believes she's an alien destined for world domination, says she can enter people's brain stems, and claims Hitler was the greatest contributor to world peace.

[2] She has called death ‘delicious’, seemingly endorsed suicide, but also believes she has the power to help people ‘stay physically alive’.

[3] She is Teal Swan, better known as the Gucci Guru, and she has become what some call the leader of a terrifying posh cult detailed in a new Medium article.

[4] You will never find Swan in robes, she prefers tight skirts. And the self-appointed leader is unabashed about her preference for expensive jewels and luxurious hotels.

[5] ‘I knew that I wanted to be famous and be on people's television screens and be on stage,’ she once said.

[6] ‘At a cellular level, I knew that I was destined to be a performer.’

[7] ‘Before I even came down, there was an entire panel of Arcturian beings — sixth dimensional beings — who even chose the way I would look in this life.’

[8] It may sound silly to some, but Swan has successfully spread her message far and wide.

[9] She has 434,000 subscribers on YouTube, 53 million total views on her videos, 162,000 Facebook likes, and 60,000 followers on Instagram.

[10] And that's not including the people who come from all over the world to attend Swan's workshops and seminars at her center in Atenas, Costa Rica.

[11] It is there Swan was able to convince one follower he had been ‘brutally sodomized’ by a gray alien, and told another that her cat was a ‘holographic soul projection from the planet Sirius’ who was trying to warn them about their blood sugar.

[12] What is Swan's endgame? She wants to build a company that will become one of the wealthiest ‘in the world’, an ‘unstoppable monolith’ that will buy countries and ‘build new societies’.

[13] Swan sees herself as a revolutionary, going so far as to compare herself to Martin Luther King Jr, Jesus Christ, and Gandhi.

[14] ‘What's happening with them is what's happening with me,’ she said. ‘If I stand up on stage and someone puts a bullet through my head, I have more attention.’

[15] Swan believes she is part human, part extra-terrestrial, as well as ‘nonphysical’, and claims to have the power to force herself into people's brain stems.

[16] ‘I activate the part of their brain which is in charge of breathing (and other autonomic functions like the heartbeat)’, she said in one video.

[17] ‘This allows them a channel back into their body’.

[18] Swan also claims she can ‘hear thought forms’, as well as a person's ‘bones, organs, nerves, veins’, and professes to ‘see the future’ through ‘prophetic visions and dreams’.

[19] ‘How do I have all this information? It's because I'm extra sensory,’ she has said. ‘I'm not limited to this dimension or time-space reality.’

[20] ‘I did not come to earth with a specific message. I came here as a course turner. I am the game changer.’

[21] Swan sees her followers as soldiers that she has trained for her ‘collective awakening’ or — as she once phrased it — ‘members of my army’.

[22] But there appears to be a dangerous underside to Swan's following, which promotes itself via emblazoned booty shorts and matching tattoos.

[23] Swan has been recorded making a number of racist comments, such as when she recalled seeing a group of African American women who she claimed ‘were actually feeling so hopeless that they were wanting rape’.

[24] ‘A really beautiful woman down in Africa may come up to the US and be considered pretty ugly,’ she said in another instance.

[25] During one interview Swan even claimed that Hitler had done more for peace than anyone else in the world.

[26] ‘If you are on the highest vibrational level looking at this planet, the person who added to peace more than anyone else on this planet is Hitler,’ she said.

[27] ‘No one was thinking about world peace until he came along.’

[28] Swan has also made a number of concerning remarks about death and suicide, made all the more worrisome after two of her own followers killed themselves.

[29] ‘People who commit suicide — what you'll see is that they've fulfilled their purpose because they are understanding — you know, the higher self,’ she once said.

[30] ‘Their source stream is understanding the concept of love. But they only unite with that love they have created when they commit suicide.’

[31] Swan, who once claimed she was sewed [sic] into a corpse for 12 hours while being abused in a cult as a child, has also said death is ‘delicious’.

[32] ‘When you die, it's like lining up with the best food you've ever eaten, and the lover who you've always wanted,’ she said in one video.

[33] Swan has also told her followers that ‘we shouldn't just assume that living is always right’ and that ‘death is not wrong’.

[34] ‘Death feels wonderful no matter who you are,’ she added.

[35] One friend called Swan the ‘most unstable person’ they had ever met, adding that she was ‘pathologically manipulative’.

[36] ‘She makes you believe that she sees the truth,’ another friend said. ‘The truth is, she likes the control and the power over other people.’

[37] The latter is something Swan herself has admitted.

[38] ‘I am a master at mental chess,’ she once said. ‘I play mind games with people.’

7

As stated in the Particulars of Claim, the Article “was illustrated with 10 large colour photographic images of the claimant”. The claimant relies on “the … photographs and captions, and the context and mode of its publication online including the Link on Facebook”.

8

There is no need to reproduce the photos. They show a slim white woman with long dark hair, seemingly in her 30s, in a variety of locations, dressed in various ways. In most, she is posing for portraits. One shows her in a bikini, another sitting cross-legged in a loose flowing garment, akin to a kaftan. Others show her in yoga wear, or a close-fitting dress. Two of the photos show the claimant apparently speaking or presenting to groups. Five of them show a large tattoo on her left upper arm: a circle within a square within a triangle within a circle.

9

It is relevant to set out the captions, which have been lettered for ease of reference:-

A. She is Teal Swan, better known as the Gucci Guru, and she has become what some call the leader of a new — and terrifying — posh cult

B. Swan has spread her message far and wide. She has 434,000 subscribers on YouTube, 53 million total views on her videos, and 60,000 followers on Instagram

C. That's because Swan is as forthright in her thirst for fame as she is with the belief that she was anointed in this life by ‘sixth dimensional beings’.

D. You will never find Swan in robes, she prefers tight skirts. And the self-appointed leader is unabashed about her preference for expensive jewels and luxurious hotels

E. Swan is as forthright in her thirst for fame as she is with the belief that she was anointed in this life by ‘sixth dimensional beings’

F. Swan sees herself as a revolutionary, going so far as to compare herself to Martin Luther King Jr, Christ, and Gandhi

G. People who come from all over...

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    ...adverse effect on the way that right-thinking members of society generally would treat the claimant” Swan v Associated Newspapers Ltd [2020] EWHC 1312 (QB) [20(3)] and cases there cited. This formulation encapsulates the common law threshold of seriousness identified in Thornton v Telegrap......
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