Website revealed names, ages and other information about girls before star adopted them, causing ‘considerable distress’

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

Madonna and her twin daughters, Stella and Estere, have accepted undisclosed damages from Associated Newspapers over a “serious invasion of privacy”.

Madonna, who adopted the four-year-olds in February, brought the case at London’s high court over a January 2017 article which caused her “considerable personal distress and anxiety”, her solicitor Jenny Afia told Mrs Justice Davies on Thursday.

It revealed the girls’ names, race, age, and that they lived in an orphanage in Malawi and were the subject of pending applications for adoption by Madonna.

Afia said: “The Mail Online published it at a time when, as the journalist ought to have appreciated, Madonna would be powerless to protect the girls from harm.

“Their actions could, in her view, have threatened the integrity and/or outcome of the adoption process which would have had potentially life-changing implications for the girls, as well as for Madonna and her family.”

Afia said Associated had made a settlement offer involving the payment of damages and costs, and Madonna would donate the damages to the Mercy James Institute for Paediatric Surgery in Malawi.

“She is pleased that at least some good can come out of the situation.”

Afia said the 58-year-old star, who was not in court, felt she had no option but to take action over what she regarded as a serious invasion of privacy.

A Mail Online spokesman said: “We had no intention whatsoever of exposing the girls to any harm and no reason to believe that they were in fact exposed to harm.”