News of the World 'targeted Leslie Ash and Lee Chapman for phone hacking'

Couple claim investigators working for paper may have accessed 'highly personal' voicemails from their children while she was ill

Mobile phones belonging to actor Leslie Ash and her ex-footballer husband Lee Chapman may have been targeted by Glenn Mulcaire the private investigator employed by the News of the World at the time when she was recovering from a life-threatening superbug infection.

The couple said today they had also received information to suggest their two children then aged 16 and 13 were also targeted by Mulcaire and they fear that, according to their lawyer Charlotte Harris, that "highly personal telephone voicemails left by her children may have been compromised".

Men Behaving Badly star Ash contracted the MSSA superbug in April 2004 after she was being treated in hospital. In June of that year the News of the World wrote that she "may never walk again" and that she was "pale and gaunt and hooked up to a catheter, with no feeling in her lower body".

So serious was the illness that there were fears that the actor's life was in danger and it is understood that she fears that messages left for her around this time may have been intercepted. She made a gradual recovery, although in her 2009 autobiography said that she would probably have to remain on painkillers for the rest of her life.

The couple wrote to the Metropolitan police in October 2010 asking whether the force had any evidence that their mobile phone messages were intercepted by Mulcaire during the period when he was employed by the News of the World. Mulcaire was jailed for six months in January 2007 after he was found guilty of hacking into voicemails from aides to Prince William and Prince Harry on behalf of the paper.

Earlier this month, it emerged that the Met had found four pieces of paper referring to Leslie Ash in Mulcaire's notebook, and five items relating to Lee Chapman. There were further items relating to their children, and the two fear that intimate family messa! ges from the children to their seriously ill mother were intercepted - which is how Mulcaire would have got hold of their mobile phone numbers.

However, to the family's frustration, the Met said told Ash and Chapman that "it is not necessarily correct to assume

that Mr Mulcaire's possession of the ... information was for the purposes of interception" and the force under fire for its handling of the investigation suggested that "she contacts her mobile phone provider".

Unhappy with this explanation, the couple intend to apply for a court order to force the Met to release copies of the information in Mulcaire's notebooks that releate to them and their children. Their lawyer, Harris, of JMW Solicitors, also indicated they are now preparing to sue the News of the World for breach of privacy.

To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000.

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