Martha, the real-life persona of Baby Reindeer, is threatening legal action over the Netflix series that portrays her as a rampant stalker.
Fiona Harvey, a Scottish lawyer who the Daily Record previously declined to identify, is now trying to inform everyone about her experiences since her identity became public following the success of the series.
In an unexpected move, Harvey remarked last night: ‘You have my authority to name me in the Daily Record. I give you my permission to mention me because people need to know what’s going on.”
READ MORE: Armed police cross Springburn Street and find ‘imitation firearm’ as man faces charges
READ MORE: XL bully who attacked woman in Motherwell incident must be put to death
The hit series features a character based on Harvey, 58, as a stalker who is believed to have served a four-and-a-half year prison sentence before encountering comedian Richard Gadd. Additionally, the show, currently the most watched on Netflix, features Martha in prison for nine months after tormenting Donny, a fictional representation of Gadd.
Harvey said, “I haven’t been to jail. I don’t know where the four and a half years and nine months come from. None of this happened. It’s a lot of nonsense.’
Baby Reindeer reveals the alleged fascination of Gadd’s touted stalker. In the series, English actress Jessica Gunning, 38, plays Martha Scott, a Scottish woman in her forties from Camden.
Harvey is now considering legal action against both the stand-up artist and Netflix.
She argued, “Gadd has to prove that I went to jail, which just didn’t happen. I was never sent to prison. That’s obvious.
“Police at your door would be the first thing, then you would get charged, then you would get a trial. Then you’d get a fine or something, or go to jail.
“This is all made up and exaggerated. There are no restraining orders, injunctions or prohibitions anywhere. That’s just not possible. I haven’t had the police at my door for any of these things.
“It’s a bunch of nonsense. I don’t have any money, but I’m a great lawyer, so I’ll represent myself.”
Baby Reindeer is produced by Clerkenwell Films, part of BBC Studios, and has achieved worldwide acclaim. It is striking that the famous horror author Stephen King is a fan, who compares Martha to Annie Wilkes from his 1987 blockbuster Misery.
In the series, Gadd, 34, takes on the persona of Donny Dunn. Martha bombards him with more than 40,000 emails, 350 hours of voicemail, 744 tweets, 46 Facebook messages and 106 pages of letters during his painful three-year situation.
Netflix has confirmed that the emails Donny receives in the show are the “real emails” he interestingly received from his stalker, all signed “sent from my iPhone” despite Martha not having one.
According to Rory Lynch, a lawyer specializing in defamation and privacy at Gateley Legal, Harvey may have a plausible case for defamation because people discover her identity through a technique known as “puzzle identification.”
Internet sleuths took to social media and pieced together clues that exposed her identity, including a reference to a bar scene with Baby Reindeer where Martha begs for help hanging her curtains, only to be met with a slew of innuendos.
The sleuths identified a tweet from September 23, 2014, in which Harvey wrote: “@MrRichardGadd my curtains must be hanging badly.”
Harvey, a law graduate from the University of Aberdeen, would have to prove that the show’s allegations are both false and have caused her significant damage.
Lynch commented: “All I can assume is that when Clerkenwell, Films, the BBC and Netflix looked at it with their legal team, they thought they could be confident it was a drama. It is not intended to be an actual fact. documentary.
“So even though Netflix said it’s a true story, it’s actually a dramatization of a true story.
“But I do think Richard Gadd could have been a little more careful in making many of the scenes fictional, but also in hiding the identities of the people the scene was based on.”
Early in the series, Donny discovers that Martha has been imprisoned after accusing a former employer and the employer’s husband of abusing their deaf child.
More than twenty years earlier, Scottish lawyer Laura Wray took legal action over similar allegations Harvey had made against Laura and her late husband, Labor MP Jimmy Wray.
Laura claims Harvey wrongly accused her and her husband of abusing their three-year-old son, who has a rare chromosomal condition.
Participate Glasgow Live’s WhatsApp community here and receive the latest news directly in your messages
Laura says: “We have imposed an interim ban. I don’t think she responded and I don’t think there was a full hearing afterwards because it kept her from coming near me.
“It was a long time ago and I haven’t heard from her since.
“I’ve watched the Netflix show now and it’s pretty creepy, so to speak.”
Harvey, on the other hand, says he lives in fear because of the show’s impact.
She said: “Gadd and Netflix portrayed this as a true story and now a little man in North Carolina making death threats to me believes it is a true story. But I think you have to be very stupid to believe it where is.”
The Record featured two exclusive interviews with Harvey last week. Out of a duty of care, it was decided not to reveal her identity, but other papers went ahead and named her without permission.
She has openly admitted that she is the real Martha from the Netflix series, as seen in several Facebook posts.
Harvey said last night: “Any semblance of a normal life I had is gone. It’s open season on me and this is my chance to speak out.
“Would it have been better if I hadn’t spoken to anyone? No, I do not think so. That’s why I also refuted Laura Wray’s accusations on Facebook and will be making a big TV appearance soon, so everyone might as well know who that is me, and at least they’ll hear the truth.
“I think we can easily prove that I’m not a career criminal by saying I haven’t been to prison. I don’t have any criminal convictions.”