Court of Appeals imposes fine over Vanhanen kiss-and-tell book

Ruusinen and publisher acquitted in lower court

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Helsinki Court of Appeals on Tuesday found Susan Ruusunen and publisher Kari Ojala guilty of violating the privacy of Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen (Centre). They were sentenced to pay fines and damages.
      The issue at hand was the book Pääministerin morsian (“The Prime Minister’s Bride”), in which Ruusunen reveals information about her nearly one-year relationship with Vanhanen.
      Ojala will have to pay a fine of EUR 840, and Ruusunen was ordered to pay EUR 300.
      The court also ordered Ojala to pay Vanhanen EUR 1,000 in damages for suffering that he was caused, and to pay the Prime Minister’s court costs.
      Ojala was also ordered to forfeit EUR 4,260 in ill-gotten gains from the sale of the book. Ruusunen was ordered to pay EUR 4,270.
     
The ruling reverses an earlier decision by Helsinki District Court, which voted to acquit both defendants in March.
      The Court of Appeals found that the information in the book and references to Vanhanen’s sex life and intimate events, as well as his children’s emotions and behaviour, were such that they might cause the Prime Minister harm and suffering.
      The court also found that the information that came out was not relevant to Vanhanen’s political activities, and that the publication was not necessary for handling a matter of importance for society.
     
The Court of Appeals found that Ojala and Ruusunen had acted deliberately, as Vanhanen had not given his approval for the publication of the book, and has otherwise taken a negative view of the publication of information from his private life.
      Mitigating factors included the fact that the book did not contain information about Vanhanen’s life that would have been especially harmful. An aggravating circumstance for Ojala was that he is a professional in publishing, and should have known better than Ruusunen about the limits of freedom of the press.
     
“The decision is what we were looking for”, said Vanhanen a moment after hearing about the ruling.
      The Prime Minister emphasised that the decision cannot yet be implemented, and that he will comment on the case when it is really over.
      He added that throughout the process he has focused on the principle of whether or not it is acceptable to disseminate personal details of a politician’s private life. He felt that when it takes effect, the decision could serve as a precedent for similar privacy cases.
     
Ruusunen was crushed by the decision, saying that she shed tears over it.
      “I have worked hard to get back on my feet and I am afraid that I will collapse again. This is a personal bankruptcy. I cannot pay it. I am living 100 per cent hand to mouth”, she told the weekly gossip magazine Seiska after hearing about the decision.
     
Ruusunen feels that she did nothing illegal by writing about her own life. Her lawyer Riitta Leppiniemi had been saying all the time that she never intended to hurt anybody.
      “In her view, she has written about events in her own life, or how she experienced them. She has thought that she would have the freedom to write about these things”, Leppiniemi told the Finnish News Agency STT.
      Ruusunen maintains that she has not spread private information about Prime Minister Vanhanen deliberately. She notes that Vanhanen himself has revealed some information related to his private life.
     
Publisher Ojala denounced the decision as a narrowing of freedom of speech and the press. On the website of his publishing house Etukeno, he wrote that the decision puts stress on writers of autobiographical works and the whole book publishing business.
      “After this anybody can be punished for anything, if someone in power claims to have been hurt, even without specifying what was hurtful and how”, Ojala writes.
      He said that he is considering asking for permission to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court, once he has read the decision carefully and calculated if there is enough money to continue the trial process.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Prosecution to appeal acquittal in Vanhanen book case (7.3.2008)
  Publisher and ex-girlfriend acquitted in privacy case - Vanhanen to appeal decision (6.3.2007)
  Susan´s book sets off a media feeding-frenzy (7.2.2007)

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