Summary: This is an email sent to Lizzie Greene, Group Legal Advisor at the Daily Mail & Associated Newspapers to follow up our original retraction, rewrite and recompense request as well as the subsequent demand for evidence that followed. Aside from simple acknowledgements, we had yet to hear from the Daily Mail with the deadline for resolving this looming. If the Daily Mail is unable to offer a fair and just resolution after 28 days, then a complaint with the Independent Press Standards Organisation will be the next step. Upon reflection we have withdrawn our request for a rewrite of the original article because it’s so full of falsehoods! If anything, the real story here is more about the bias, prejudice and nepotism behind the original article and we’d be very encouraged to see the Daily Mail take responsibility for that.
Dear Ms Greene
On 30th September 2022 we wrote to Ted Verity in order to request the retraction, rewrite and recompense of the Daily Mail articles about us at Lighthouse International Group. This was acknowledged on 4th October by yourself and we followed this up on 7th October (amended on 10th October) with a comprehensive list of 45 false statements found in your article. We know you cannot prove these statements because they are false, either partially or as a whole, which we are proving through the 154 requests for evidence we’ve made. We have yet to receive any update on the progress with our statement of retraction and recompense. However, whilst your investigation takes place, the defaming articles about us continue to remain online. Your article and your lack of response increasingly damages the Daily Mail’s already fragile reputation.
The Bullying Practices Of The Daily Mail
I am hastened to remind you that the Daily Mail has been extremely officious with us when it comes to deadlines. On at least one occasion we found Tom Kelly to be not only officious, but also condescending for not coming back to him within an extremely tight deadline because he said this story was of “very significant public interest”. At all times, however, we were responsive and communicated with you respectfully. Why do you not show us the same courtesy?
The last few months have self-evidently shown us that this article was neither in the public interest nor has it shown itself to be of much interest to the public either. However, the fact you have written a piece that is maliciously false and cannot be substantiated with evidence is very much in the public interest. It is very much in the public interest to reveal that you have written this article on that basis because of biased and prejudicial reasons that Mr Kelly and Mr Luck have, including nepotism between them and their sources. It is very much in the public interest to reveal such unscrupulous and incredibly damaging practices by the Daily Mail and its journalists. Given the unsubstantiated nature of this piece at the very least it ought to have been taken down immediately until your review is completed.
The damage that has been done to us in the last few weeks alone because of your article has been significant which the Daily Mail will now need to compensate for, in terms of the retraction, and required compensation.
I will remind you that it took an extensive period of time for the Daily Mail to publish their intended article. In response we have since published extensive rebuttals online proving the fact that this article is full of malicious falsehoods and unsubstantiated claims by its sources and the Daily Mail itself. Therefore the libellous nature of this article should not be news to you. This all means in reality that you have had a lot longer than three weeks to remove the offending article.
The Damage Caused By The Daily Mail’s Lack Of Response
Quite simply, your libellous article about us is being continually used as a means to leveraging pseudo-legitimacy for an ongoing malicious smear campaign designed to defame, discredit and destroy us, our lives and our livelihoods. This malevolent campaign is being headed up by your named sources along with a pack of other malignantly toxic individuals.
These hateful people continue to relentlessly attack us through ridiculous Reddit forums, abusive tweets, slanderous radio shows, ill-informed podcasts, amateur YouTube videos, established media institutions and also through more covert means.
The time you are now taking without any form of communication is unconscionable. Notice the massive difference, Ms Greene, when you highlighted to Mr Waugh about the content we had on YouTube in relation to one of your sources. He immediately removed it even before contacting his legal counsel as a measure of respect both to the individual concerned and yourselves. Why do you not show us the same courtesy?
The Daily Mail Has Also Been Abused
What is becoming clearer by the day is that the Daily Mail’s status as a national newspaper is clearly being abused by a small number of malevolent constructive saboteurs both inside and outside of your organisation. People like Tom Kelly and Adam Luck have been trusted to make good decisions, but they have, along with others, made some terrible decisions that are costing the Daily Mail significantly in terms of its time, energy, finances and, more importantly, its reputation.
This article likely cost tens of thousands of pounds to produce and publish, yet it has made so little impact on the Daily Mail’s readership, along with the public as a whole. It is nonsense that will now cost the Daily Mail far more than Mr Kelly could ever have imagined because, as you are no doubt learning quickly, there is nothing valid or real in any way to back up what has been written. We at Lighthouse are nothing like the evil people portrayed in your published work of fiction, nor are we the easy target we may have been perceived as by Mr Kelly. No doubt it’s incredibly embarrassing that an article about such a small and, to date, relatively obscure company could represent such a large mistake and exponentially increasing cost to the paper!
The Real Story Is Now Coming Out
The real story behind this article is now emerging. Although we didn’t share the full details, we clearly stated this to Mr Kelly from the outset and he chose to ignore this because it didn’t suit his biased and prejudiced agenda. Out of care, consideration and sensitivity, we have not revealed the full extent of the real reasons for the attacks on Lighthouse International Group. The reality is we have been persecuted for 18 years and not 18 months because these attacks have been most viciously conducted at the hands of malignantly toxic family members of the people we’ve helped at Lighthouse International Group. They are the real coercive and controlling people in this and they fear exposure through their damaged offspring, siblings, partners or friends, now getting the care, nurture and support they never had growing up. This is because of how it reveals the abuse and the perpetrators of that abuse. Parents especially are now panicking because their extreme abuse and/or neglect is being revealed publicly by their offspring, like in the case of one of your sources, Rani Singh. These people continue to assault us and the Daily Mail has been wilfully complicit in facilitating their ongoing abuse.
The Daily Mail Needs To Take Responsibility For Its Careless Actions
An article in the Daily Mail was our assailants’ big hope for what is a criminal and illegal smear campaign against us. Sadly for them though (and by extension the Daily Mail) it’s now backfiring completely! Through all this we’re discrediting the Daily Mail’s reporting, not through making up stories, but rather because the Daily Mail is un-credible in how it goes about its business and treats people.
In closing, I reiterate our requests of the Daily Mail:
1. Gain permission for all relevant evidence to be publicly disclosed by Lighthouse International Group in fair defence of these claims by their sources so that we may provide them for publication.
2. Fully and properly investigate the motivations and circumstances behind each source’s accusations, in line with their provable involvement in what Lighthouse’s solicitors identified as a deliberate smear campaign of character and wellbeing assassination attempts.
3. Retract the following articles and video immediately from the Daily Mail Online website:
- EXPOSED: The trendy life coach group accused of fleecing and threatening its trusting middle class devotees, as victims sucked into a sinister ‘personal growth’ programme issue a chilling warning. (Published 19th April 2022)
- Video: Leader of ‘life coaching’ group recorded verbally abusing ex-client. (Published 19th April 2022)
- Shame of the life coach who named child abuse victim: Awareness group boss is branded ‘disgraceful’ for detailing past of woman who accused him of bullying. (Published 8th May 2022)
4. Publish a public apology from Mr Tom Kelly, Mr Adam Luck, Mr Ted Verity and Mr Paul Dacre for publishing fabricated and unsubstantiated claims and the unprofessionally biased, prejudiced and false reporting they are responsible for, especially in view of the counter-arguments and evidence Lighthouse delivered to Mr Kelly in the preparation of this article.
5. We had previously requested you to re-write the article, but given the extensive amount of bias, prejudice and false reporting there is nothing left to write about once this is removed. Therefore if you are to write anything further, the only thing you can legitimately do is to publish the entire truth of this situation, which will include:
- Taking full responsibility for the damage and harm caused by your sources and the mistake the Daily Mail made in believing and publishing such nonsense and false claims.
- Explaining the responsibility the Daily Mail is taking and measures being brought into place to protect the public from this ever happening again to other people in the future.
- Writing the real story about how this article came to be through your fallacious sources from malignantly toxic families and their misleading and maliciously false statements, taking full responsibility, with the same intensity as was taken to ‘expose’ us falsely.
6. Provide financial compensation to Lighthouse International Group and its partners for the significant damage caused to our personal reputation, our business, our families and our children which we are receiving ongoing legal advice for.
Our Final Request
As a bare minimum, we request the immediate removal of the three offending posts as listed above. In line with IPSO’s standards you are required to give us a full response in order that we find a fair resolution before Friday 28th October 2022.
We encourage the Daily Mail to stop bullying and attempting to profit from those that they believe cannot defend themselves. Whilst you may have gotten away with this in many other cases, in this case you absolutely will not. We will not stop until justice is served. We will also actively seek out and bring together the innocent people that the Daily Mail insists on picking on and help such people to stand up to you and your bullying and life-destroying behaviour.
We look forward to hearing from you very shortly.
Regards
Chris Nash
Thanks for this article Chris! The actions of the Daily Mail are unacceptable. They publish defamatory articles full of false statements and believe that they can get away with it without any consequences for them. These Media bullying practices are quite common and it is crucial to keep those involved in writing this accountable. Their behaviour causes real damage to people’s lives, to their reputations, to their businesses and their families. The law exists to protect against this malignant behaviour and the Truth will eventually come out! The individuals behind these articles written against Lighthouse International – Mr Kelly and Mr Luck – will be held accountable and the reputations of Lighthouse International and of those individuals who were viciously attacked will be restored. They believed for too long that they could get away with this kind of behaviour and too many innocent people were affected. It’s time to stop these actions once and for all and to use all legal measures to stand up against the Daily Mail!
Thank you for your work here Chris and all involved. The lack of response and action as well as the complete lack of evidence or any legal action from the constructive sabatoeurs who engaged the Daily Mail in the first place says it all. They were even sent evidence to the contrary before it was published which should have warranted an interview, a one on one meeting to get the story right. These opportunities have been offered to various people time and time again with no response. Where is the due diligence or the care for what is being printed, what is really in the interest of the public, for the human beings involved? Its time for the Daily Mail to take responsibility and start to put this right.
Thanks Chris for sharing this strong and substantial communication to the Daily Mail. I think it’s embarrassing that there’s so many false accusations in one article. As you’ve said there’s been extensive material written about the Daily Mail article and yet they’ve not acted. There’s no burning conscience to remove what’s been written and as yet, no humility to say, “Sorry, we got this very wrong.” The deadline for submitting our complaint to IPSO (Independent Press Standards Organisation) is looming and it will be fascinating to see how they reply. This is a message to the Daily Mail that we will not be abused in the way that they have. It also shows any media institution how we will treat articles about us that are based on purely on hearsay. We’re not perfect and we don’t proclaim to be, but if someone decides to point their fingers at us for something then they need to be able to back that up so we can regenerate, learn and grow through. However, if someone is making up a story because they want to destroy us and our reputation, then they will be held accountable for such reprobative behaviour. This is what it means to stand firm in the face of tyranny; too many lives and livelihoods are being destroyed by constructive saboteurs with a malicious agenda.
It’s evident to see that with 54 false statements after receiving a 17,000 word document from us at Lighthouse. That the Daily Mail tried to discredit our work and research because they thought we were weak, on the contrary we are not weak at all, in fact these false articles have made us all here at Lighthouse stronger.
Chris, your email to Lizzie Greene states how bad the Daily Mail have messed up here, that as a result need to remove the article and write an apology stating how wrong they were. The fact Tom Kelly wrote to us demanding a deadline yet not reciprocating that is appalling. Not to mention how they’ve (the Daily Mail) have been a platform for smearing, lying, cheating, vengeful online saboteurs.
This whole situation has really opened my perspective to big companies and those who work within them. Those in the Daily Mail, people like Tom Kelly who abuse their perceived power as he does ought to be ashamed of themselves.
Considering how haughty the article comes across that the Daily Mail wrote, it’s fascinating how much they aren’t able to answer our questions and demands for evidence with speed and ease. As I write this we are 26 days into a 28 day deadline before we need to take this complaint to the Independent Press Standards Organisation. The fact is that the truth will always triumph in the end and what matters most here is that the truth comes out and the public get to know just how little of this article had any basis in that.
Unlike so many of the sensationalised articles in the media, what I really appreciate about this email is the balance and care in what it means to uphold standards, act responsibly, and seek out the truth behind the intentions of what has been relentlessly directed at us.
This includes caring for the medium, in this case, the Daily Mail, for how they have been used and manipulated for our accusers’ smear campaign and personal agendas.
While we are being attacked and damaged by this ongoing constructive sabotage, we have not turned into attackers ourselves, we have simply requested for the truth to be revealed, for due diligence to be carried out and for responsibility to be taken for poor journalistic integrity. We are requesting that the Daily Mail lives up to the standards they say they do, through action, by making right what has been wronged. If we can’t expect that from the mainstream media, there is something incredibly broken and malevolent about their existence.
Thank you Chris. The more I read your letter the more I imagined the voices of all of the families and children who’s lives were destroyed by hateful smear campaigns because they lacked clear leadership and a supportive community. The pseudo-legitimacy that you talked about is at the heart of so much corruption. It is where liars and thieves lean on popularity to bolster and boost their manipulative campaigns. But you know what – the truth always comes out and the end and thats when it ends up much worse for them.
What an incredibly powerful letter! It is not only standing up for what is right in this situation, but using this as an example to all others who are being bullied by the newspapers and the media. What an incredible president this will set and is setting, I hope that it will be an inspiration to many as I’m sure it will.
Thank you Chris for sharing this. Such a critical, crucial and vital points that you have made. The original article was so full of falsehoods that it’s hard to rewrite- changing garbage still leaves garbage! And if the lies were removed there would be very little of an article.
What is particularly damming is your point of how the article was the spearhead of a toxic vendetta by a small number of people under the guise of being for the public interest.
It is an abuse of that freedom and demeans it for others that need to write for the public interest!
Brilliantly written letter. For the Daily Mail to have to backtrack this much… I have never seen this before in my life. It makes it absolutely clear that they need to seriously look into their sources and where all this originated although I think they are perfectly aware of what they have done even if their legal counsel isn’t. I’d like to think they would have been advised to not do something so stupid.
This is such an embarrassment for the Daily Mail, to have got it THIS wrong, to have written THIS many falsehoods, to have been so careless with the evidence that was provided to them which refuted the claims but they went ahead and printed the claims anyway… it’s abysmal. This was not an investigation, this was not journalism, this was a train wreck. And absolutely, they will be held accountable for their bullying and defamation. When a full inquiry is done into what the Daily Mail has facilitated here, there will be outrage, there’s no two ways about it.
Thank you, the more we look at this serious error the Daily Mail have made, the more and more disturbing it is becoming. How are we supposed to believe what we are reading in such an influential and far-reaching medium as the tabloids, with examples like the Daily Mail?!
When you look at the 6 careless actions of the Daily Mail that we are holding them accountable to, it’s absolutely disgraceful that we are even having to do this with a medium which holds great responsibility to inform the public. Their interests have been with themselves and NOT for or in the public interest.
They made the most ill-advised decision they could have made in their history in attempting to defame Paul Waugh and Lighthouse International Group. Make it right Lizzie Greene.
Thank you for sharing this with us all Chris. While this has been stressful and the anxiety it has brought up over the past 18 months, it has proven to be a huge learning curve for me. What I mean, is that it has shown me the level of malignant toxicity in this world and how much of it is in the media. Printing stories, not facts, but these are not stories to us, this is our life’s work, this is our livelihood and our family and friends.
I value you pointing out that before the article was published, the correspondence sent by Mr Kelly stressed the urgency in getting his story published, now that we at Lighthouse International Group are requesting the same courtesy, where is the urgency now? Now that it is going to affect them, it is a different ball game.
I really value you sharing this email, for what this will do now is show organisations like the Daily Mail that they will now be held accountable for their libel acts and that justice will prevail. As it says in the bible, John 8:32 “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
Thank you Chris