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This article contains descriptions of alleged stalking and sexual harassment.
Fiona Harvey, the woman who reportedly served as inspiration for Martha in Netflix’s Baby Reindeer, will be allowed to sue the streaming platform for defamation following a ruling from a judge.
Harvey filed a $170 million suit against Netflix on June 6, alleging that the show amounted to defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, gross negligence, and violations of privacy. In the series, Martha is depicted sexually assaulting Donny Dunn (the autobiographical character played by Richard Gadd) in an alley, and violently attacking him in a pub, “smashing a glass bottle over his head and gouging his eyes with her thumbs,” per court documents. However, Harvey did not do these things in real life.
Even so, within a few days of the series airing, viewers were able to identify Harvey as the inspiration for Martha by finding a post on Gadd’s Facebook profile that contained the phrase “hang my curtains,” echoing a line in the show. Subsequently, Harvey claimed that she was “inundated… with threatening and harassing messages,” which caused her to “suffer severe emotional distress,” according to court documents. Though Baby Reindeer billed itself as a “true story,” Netflix executives admitted in July that Harvey had never been convicted of stalking, though Martha is presented as a convicted stalker in the show. In real life, however, Gadd obtained a First Instance Harassment Warning against Harvey but did not press actual criminal charges.
Netflix made a motion to dismiss the lawsuit at the end of July. But in a decision issued Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, judge Gary Klausner ruled that Harvey would be allowed to continue her lawsuit against the streamer. Klausner wrote that “there is a major difference between stalking and being convicted of stalking in a court of law,” and that “there are major differences between inappropriate touching and sexual assault, as well as between shoving and gouging another’s eyes.”
“While plaintiff’s purported actions are reprehensible, defendants’ statements are of a worse degree and could produce a different effect in the mind of a viewer,” the judge said.
The Sunday Times reported in June that Netflix requested to include the disclaimer, “This is a true story,” even though Gadd expressed concerns about that claim. In a document that Gadd submitted to the court earlier this month, he stated that while Baby Reindeer was “emotionally true, it is not a beat-by-beat recounting of the events and emotions I experienced as they transpired.” Gadd also wrote that Harvey stalked him for three years, from 2014 to 2017, constantly hanging around the pub where he worked. He also alleged that there was “a particularly intense period of time when Harvey often attempted to touch me in inappropriate (and sometimes sexual) ways.” She also reportedly sent Gadd “thousands of emails, hundreds of voicemails, and a number of handwritten letters” which “often included sexually explicit, violent, and derogatory content, hateful speech, and threats.”
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