Viewers of ITV’s The Hack have been gripped by its retelling of the phone hacking scandal, which, once brought to light, resulted in the News of the World’s collapse. But for one writer, Jenny Evans, who worked on the exposé, the closure of the newspaper was more than just a professional win. It was intensely personal – and only half of the story.
In the late nineties, at the age of 19, the world felt full of possibilities and fun for Evans. Until it all came crashing down in a single night; she experienced a brutal sexual assault at the hands of an unnamed celebrity. It would go on to change her whole life.
It’s something detailed in her moving memoir, Don’t Let It Break You, Honey, which came out earlier this year. In the book, Evans refers to her attacker solely as ‘The Famous Man’, not just for legal purposes, but to de-centre the importance of his identity from her story. Instead, allowing her steadfast pursuit of truth and justice, and of turning fear into bravery and pain into power, to shine through.
Evans assisted real-life journalist Nick Davies (played by David Tennant in The Hack) with his investigation, detailing how certain tabloids wrapped their insidious tentacles around the secrets of unsuspecting victims, before airing them for profit, for decades. Having experienced the gutting betrayal first hand, of having her most private details shared by the institutions designed to protect us all from evil, she was primed to help.
Before meeting Davies, Evans had amassed ring binders packed full of information about the tabloids’ possible dark methods and toxic relationships with police informants, which Davies was desperately trying to get someone – anyone – to care about and put an end to.
She spent hours covertly meeting with former NOTW journalists in parks and museums, meticulously mining them for details about how, over a 20-year period, the paper would routinely and without care break into the voicemail services of celebrities, royals and the likes of missing schoolgirl Milly Dowler – the case that really blew the story wide open and caused the British public to finally sit up and take note.
One cold but sunny Tuesday morning, as The Hack nears the end of its run on ITV, Evans dialled in for a call with Cosmopolitan UK to share where she’s taking the fight next.
Life in (and out) of the limelight
The day that Evans met The Famous Man, the excitement surrounding her new life and career was palpable. She had just traded in the mountains of her small Welsh hometown for the bright lights of London, intent on pursuing an acting career after landing a role in the cult movie, Twin Towns, alongside Rhys Ifans. It was a small part, but a big chance. As well as a faster pace, the city provided a teenage Evans with the chance to meet a whole new cast of characters, including The Famous Man, whose career at the time was thriving.
After spending the day together at a mutual friend’s party, Evans had accompanied a friend to The Famous Man’s home, but when her pal left and Evans asked if The Famous Man could call her a taxi, things darkened.
“I was working with ‘London people’, they were older than me, funny and sophisticated. I was having the best time,” she shares. “So I wasn't expecting the violence of The Famous Man and his friend. It came so out of nowhere. Like a punch, I didn't see it coming. I was riding so high – then I had a long way to fall.”
The attack, in which The Famous Man encouraged a friend, The Wolf, to also partake, was so barbarous that Evans feared for her life. The Famous Man gripped her throat, forcing her over a coffee table.
What happened to her that night, back at The Famous Man’s flat, is known in the UK as assault by penetration, a form of sexual assault. “It's not known as rape because we don't know what the penetrative object was,” Evans says steadily.
Like many of the other one in four women survivors of sexual assault, she initially kept her experience quiet, retreating into her shell and ditching her burgeoning acting career before it ever had the chance to properly bloom. “I lost my confidence and trust in my own instincts, because I had been unsafe and I hadn't realised. It took me five years to recover, I gave up acting – I faxed my agent, that tells you what the era was – and I ate. I put a lot of weight on,” she shares matter of factly. The way Evans dressed changed too, as she attempted to cover her body in “dowdy” clothes as a method of protection and invisibility.
A job in a bar threw her a lifeline, “There were some really nice people [there] who seemed to like me, to my amazement, and I allowed myself to lean into that. Five of us moved in together, into a horrendous flat in North London. It was damp, but we loved it, and those friendships were what began to save me.”
Heartbreakingly, while working in that same respite of a bar, Evans was sexually assaulted for a second time – this time, by another senior male in a position of power: her manager. It happened while she slept on a sofa following a shift and ended when she awoke and forced him off of her. In her book, Evans details how her fears around losing her job and having to leave the tight knit friendship circle that had breathed life back into her kept her silent once more. It makes for a harrowing read.
At the age of 23, the death of her much-loved brother, Will, marked a change and saw Evans pursue a degree in Drama, Applied Theatre and Education. “It kicked me up the ass a bit; I wrote [to The Central School of Speech and Drama] saying I have no A-levels, but I think I'm clever and I'd like to do your course,” she laughs. Getting accepted changed the direction of her life in more ways than one. After years of trying to push away what had happened with The Famous Man, while hanging out in a sticky student bar one night, a friend walked in holding a copy of the Evening Standard. When they placed it on a nearby table, Evans saw The Famous Man staring back at her. According to the headline, he had been accused of rape. Time slowed.
Realising she was not the only one hurt by this man, shielded by a halo of wealth and celebrity, and that there could be more survivors out there, Evans made the brave choice to report what had happened to the Met Police. Initially, she felt reassured by their response: “We believe you,” she was told. Then everything changed.
Misogyny runs deep
Only days later, while reading the papers in bed with her then-boyfriend, Evans was horrified to realise that the story of her assault, minus her name, had been printed almost verbatim in The Sun. Stories in the News of the World followed shortly after, as her legal case progressed (or rather didn’t).
The papers were using her trauma to bolster their sales, cashing in on The Famous Man’s name. They’d never contacted her before and Evans explains she had no idea how the story made it into the pages; these were private details of a violent assault. Details she had barely spoken aloud before she told them to police. She had trusted them absolutely, unable to believe, in such a vulnerable moment, that what she had told them might not have been in confidence. That because her attacker was famous, her trust might be betrayed.
But Evans later found out that is exactly what happened. Her private information was either given or sold to the the Murdoch press by the Met Police. Evans now understands she was likely the target of the unlawful information gathering, such as hacking and blagging, by the tabloids too.
Litigations against the major newspaper groups have revealed the extent of the unlawful information gathering at that time though all cases were settled, meaning much remains opaque. Evans' treatment by the tabloids became a catalyst to train in journalism herself.
She later unearthed that her name, but an incorrect phone number attributed to her, was recorded in private investigator Glenn Mulcaire’s notebook too – a man employed by News of the World to dig for secrets. Mulcaire was jailed for six months after admitting attempts to intercept voicemail messages on royal aides' phones, including some left by Prince William, and accessing private messages on an MP’s phone, along with model Elle Macpherson’s .
For Evans, her case against The Famous Man further ground to a halt after she presented officers with what she believed was helpful evidence: a letter she’d written to a friend following the assault, detailing how it made her feel, along with thoughts on the assault she later suffered at the hands of her bar manager. This, it soon transpired, was not helpful to her case. In fact, the police implied, it discredited her.
“[That is the] reason I stopped talking [...] it is bullshit. That they would have given up on me at that point is [another] huge breach of trust,” Evans reflects, highlighting that almost half of rape survivors have been a victim more than once. The second assault was also entirely unrelated to the first.
“Police should have doubled down at that point, but they call it ‘bad character’ evidence, as I explained in the book, and it is still a thing.” It’s a devastating flaw in the justice system and currently, there are calls to remove ‘bad character’ references from sexual assault trials via the Victims and Courts Bill, which is working its way through the House of Lords.
Further statistics from End Violence Against Women show that while Evans’ experience in having her story shared without her consent to the press is unique, sadly the lack of care and misogyny she faced at the hands of police is not. 58% of those who reported a sexual assault said their experience with police was worse than they expected, and 73% cited worsened mental health due to police actions or inactions.
At Cosmopolitan UK, we regularly report on the epidemic of violence against women and girls, and guidelines dictate it’s best to encourage readers who may have experienced violence to report it to the police. But, often, survivors’ stories suggest this isn’t always the best approach. For Evans, her advice is to simply seek support in whatever form feels most powerful and comforting to you personally, and if you can, explore trauma-informed therapy at your own pace. “There are Rape Crisis centres and various offshoots; you don't have to report in any way [if you don’t want to]. It is very difficult to get justice from the criminal justice system, as it stands. But I think there are some changes afoot to that.”
Evans is glad that the misogyny which has long infiltrated the policing world has been put under a spotlight in recent years, largely following the murder of 33-year-old Sarah Everard at the hands of a serving officer, Wayne Couzens, in 2021. She believes the only real way to effect the changes we so urgently need is to have more women and people of colour in positions of power.
“I quite passionately believe that the phone hacking scandal, as it became known, was a police corruption scandal more than anything to do with voicemails,” Evans says plainly. “The real scandal is in the betrayal by the police, of all of us, and their attempts to cover up on behalf of the tabloids in this weird power grab. [It was an elite] ‘You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours’ set up. It was inherently misogynistic and sexist.”
The 2023 independent review of the Metropolitan Police Service, the country’s largest force, by Baroness Louise Casey, concluded that the organisation is “institutionally racist, misogynistic and homophobic”. The Met Commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, described the report as “very worrying” and accepted serious cultural failings were at play.
Once her case was formally dropped – and further details relating to her ‘bad character’ letter meeting went on to form the basis of another double-page spread in the News of the World – Evans vowed to uncover the immoral tricks of the tabloids herself.
Speaking truth to power
A lack of care for women is a thread that cropped up repeatedly for Evans during her interviews with journalists who spoke out against the News of the World. “Those newspapers bullied all of us with a fake morality, that those who made newspapers didn't stick to at all – they held others to account for things they readily did, like taking coke, shagging and using sex workers, all of that stuff,” Evans recalls, adding that they also routinely put female reporters in danger “asking them to pose as sex workers, or to go into scary places and quite often, left them there”.
In 2014, after years of fighting to be heard and trying to hold those in power to account, Evans received a life-changing payout from the Met, alongside a formal apology for the leaking of her misinformation, though it stopped short of investigating which individual officer was guilty, or why they might have done it.
The money helped to fund IVF treatment with her husband, Jasper, which resulted in the birth of her son, Leo, now six. Evans’ lawyer, Tamsin Allen, from Bindman’s, who she describes as “bad ass”, would also go on to challenge several newspapers in relation to their coverage of Evans’ case; some agreed to pay damages, none admitted fault.
Still, Evans isn’t done. She has since moved away from journalism, going on to become a Master of Laws and recently securing her first legal traineeship. She the hopes to help support other survivors of violence in navigating a hostile justice system, perhaps even being part of its reform from the inside-out. Despite all she’s been through, she maintains a cautious element of hope for the future, which can feel hard to come by in conversations relating to male-perpetrated violence and when considering the many monoliths operating callously at the expense of everyday people.
Her advice for young women who have faced adversity, particularly those at the hands of seemingly powerful men or male-led institutions, is to find your voice – no matter how long it takes you – and use it. Evans’ book was several years in the making and only came to fruition once she connected with Jemima Hunt, her literary agent at the Writer’s Practice, and found a circle of women ready to support her through the process.
“The message I want women, especially young women, to take home when they read this is that if you feel you have no power at all, there is some power in simply asking questions,” Evans says, as her dog Woody hops up onto her lap. She gives him a gentle stroke. “Trust your gut, self-advocate, ask questions. We are socialised as women to be good girls and to placate, to take things on the chin, to shift and adapt, when actually, brewing inside of us is always a question.” She pauses: “It is usually: why is this okay? I don't think this is okay. This is not okay.”
Read 'Don't Let It Break You, Honey' by Jenny Evans (published by Little, Brown Book Group, £22)
For support following a sexual assault, visit: Rape Crisis England & Wales, Rape Crisis Scotland, or The Rowan (for Northern Ireland). For additional support with mental health, visit Mind.
Jennifer Savin is Cosmopolitan UK's multiple award-winning Features Editor, who was crowned Digital Journalist of the Year for her work tackling the issues most important to young women. She regularly covers breaking news, cultural trends, health, the royals and more, using her esteemed connections to access the best experts along the way. She's grilled everyone from high-profile politicians to A-list celebrities, and has sensitively interviewed hundreds of people about their real life stories. In addition to this, Jennifer is widely known for her own undercover investigations and campaign work, which includes successfully petitioning the government for change around topics like abortion rights and image-based sexual abuse. Jennifer is also a published author, documentary consultant (helping to create BBC’s Deepfake Porn: Could You Be Next?) and a patron for Y.E.S. (a youth services charity). Alongside Cosmopolitan, Jennifer has written for The Times, Women’s Health, ELLE and numerous other publications, appeared on podcasts, and spoken on (and hosted) panels for the Women of the World Festival, the University of Manchester and more. In her spare time, Jennifer is a big fan of lipstick, leopard print and over-ordering at dinner. Follow Jennifer on Instagram, X or LinkedIn.
