New Hacking Case Outrages Britain

Eight-year-old Sarah Payne was murdered in 2000. The mobile phone details of her mother, Sara, were hacked by a News Corp employee. (photo: PA)

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By Ravi Somaiya and Sarah Lyall, The New York Times

28 July 11

ritain was awash in a new surge of outrage over the phone hacking scandal on Thursday, as news emerged that Scotland Yard had added to the list of probable victims a woman whose 8-year-old daughter was murdered by a repeat sex offender in 2000.

The tabloid at the center of the scandal, The News of the World, had championed the campaign of the grieving mother, Sara Payne, for a law warning parents if child sex offenders lived nearby. Mrs. Payne, who was paralyzed by a stroke in recent years, had written warmly of the paper in its final edition, calling it "an old friend."

A statement released on behalf of Mrs. Payne by the Phoenix Foundation, a children's charity she founded, described her as devastated and disappointed. "Today is a very sad dark day for us," the charity added in a posting on Facebook. "Our faith in good people has taken a real battering." The page noted that she was struggling in the wake of the July 1 anniversary of her daughter's abduction.

British news channels, which had been growing weary of the scandal - into a fourth week of cascading revelations that have shaken the media, political elite and police - broke into their scheduled reports to report the allegations that Ms. Payne had been hacked.

"Forgive me if I sound cynical," said one member of parliament, Tom Watson, who has led investigations into hacking, "but I don't know where it is going to end."
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