Slain girl's mom: My phone possibly hacked

LONDON -- Even in the worst of times, Sara Payne was a defender of Rupert Murdoch's News of the World. She thought she had good reason.

After her daughter Sarah, 8, was killed by a convicted pedophile living a few miles away, Payne credited the feisty tabloid with helping her campaign for a new law giving parents the right to know if anyone with regular access to their children is a sex offender.

But in a case generating a fresh uproar over the nefarious methods of News of the World, Payne acknowledged yesterday that she might have been among the thousands targeted by the paper in a widespread campaign of illegal phone hacking.

The editors reportedly had given her the cellphone as a gift so she could more easily communicate with her growing legion of supporters. Now, her charity says, the tabloid targeted Payne's gift phone.

The revelations again put Murdoch's News Corp. under a blinding spotlight at a time when some politicians are calling for the company's vast British media holdings to be broken up, saying it does not meet the criteria that media owners here be "fit and proper" companies.

It also dealt another blow to Scotland Yard, which had told Payne earlier she was not among those targeted by the tabloid, then corrected itself.

More than anything, though, Payne's involvement in the scandal robs News Corp. of one of its most sympathetic voices.

Earlier this month, Payne had bemoaned Murdoch's decision to shut down the weekly tabloid. She chided the newspaper for hacking phones, but she nevertheless described the 168-year-old paper's closing as "the passing of an old friend" in an article she wrote for its final edition.

Yesterday, however, the charity Payne co-founded put out a statement on her behalf, saying: "Sara is absolutely devastated by this news, we're all deeply disappointed and are just working to get her through it."

Payne's targeting could spell fresh trouble for Rebekah Brooks, who resigned as head of News Corp.'s British operations and is facing criminal charges in the hacking scandal.

"These allegations are abhorrent and particularly upsetting as Sara Payne is a dear friend," Brooks, the editor of News of the World in 2000, said Thursday. "The idea that anyone on the newspaper knew that Sara or the campaign team were targeted by Mr. [private investigator Glenn] Mulcaire is unthinkable. The idea of her being targeted is beyond my comprehension."

As servings editor of News of the World in the early 2000s, Brooks closely directed the paper's coverage of Payne's crusade. She has denied any knowledge of illegal newsgathering at the Sunday tabloid.

-- With Reuters