Prince Harry is owning up to “mistakes” he made while dating former longtime girlfriend Chelsy Davy.
“I had been immature, I hadn’t really thought about my actions and I had made a stupid decision — and my mistakes were being played out publicly,” the Duke of Sussex said in a written statement obtained by the New York Times Tuesday.
The declaration was given as part of the royal’s ongoing lawsuit with Mirror Group Newspapers Limited over its alleged unethical news-gathering practices.
While Harry did not go into detail about the “stupid decision” he made, the statement was given in response to two articles the Daily Mirror wrote in January 2005 about him allegedly “flirting with a brunette” at a party while Davy was out of town.
One story was titled, “Harry’s girl to ‘dump him,'” while another ran with the headline, “Chelsy is not happy.”
Harry, 38, shared in his statement that the articles claimed Davy, now 37, had been “furious” with him and given him a “tongue-lashing down the phone,” but the duke said he didn’t “remember” if he and the Zimbabwean businesswoman even argued about the fête.
“Given we were based in different countries, a lot of our relationship was conducted over the telephone, so I know I would have spoken to her a lot over this time because it was a challenging period for me but I don’t recall her reaction,” he wrote.
Harry, who is now married to Meghan Markle and shares two children with the former “Suits” actress, dated Davy off and on from 2004 to 2011.
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Earlier this year, the British royal claimed in his memoir, “Spare,” that he split with his ex in part because of Queen Elizabeth II’s opinion of her. However, Harry’s new statement points to additional issues in their relationship.
The Archewell founder claimed that at the center of the former couple’s disputes was the fact that they had mounting distrust for those closest to them.
“By this stage, Chelsy was already extremely guarded about our relationship and our circle of friends who we trusted with information about us had shrunk considerably,” Harry said.
“Every time these kinds of stories were published, there was a strain put on our relationship, we started to distrust everyone around us.”
The two Daily Mirror articles the duke highlighted reportedly cited “friends” or “partygoers” as sources, but Harry claimed the former couple’s telephone calls were not actually attributed to anyone.
“So how could the Defendant’s journalists know about this?” he asked.
Harry is suing the Mirror Group Newspaper Unlimited on the basis that he believes it allegedly hacked his phone and used “illegal interception of voicemail messages” to obtain information for its news stories about him over the past few decades.
The case is being tried at London’s High Court.
