Prince Harry Says Palace Wouldn’t Let Him Speak Out About Cheating Accusation: ‘I Was Forced to Sit by and Say Nothing’
Prince Harry said he wanted to speak out about the accusation he cheated on assignments at boarding school, but the palace wouldn’t allow it. In his memoir Spare, Harry wrote about the ordeal, including how he was cleared of the accusations but couldn’t publicly explain himself.
Prince Harry said he couldn’t speak out about school cheating accusations
In his memoir Spare, Prince Harry shared that he was “brokenhearted” when allegations that he cheated in school made headlines. A board investigation cleared him of the cheating claim, but he couldn’t share what really happened.
“I was accused of cheating. An art teacher came forward with evidence of cheating, which turned out not to be evidence of cheating,” Harry wrote. “It turned out to be nothing at all, and I was later cleared by the exam board. But the damage was done.”
Unfortunately, he said, “the accusation stuck,” and he couldn’t do anything about it. “Brokenhearted, I wanted to release a statement, hold a press conference, tell the world: I did the work! I didn’t cheat! The palace wouldn’t let me,” Harry wrote.
He continued, “In this, as in most things, the palace stuck fast to the family motto: Never complain, never explain. Especially if the complainer was an eighteen-year-old boy.”
Harry added, “Thus, I was forced to sit by and say nothing while the papers called me a cheat and a dummy every day.”
Prince Harry slammed royal family’s ‘never complain, never explain’ motto
In Prince Harry‘s 60 Minutes interview with Anderson Cooper, Harry touched on how detrimental the royal family’s “never complain, never explain” motto was in reality.
On 60 Minutes, Cooper said, “One of the criticisms that you’ve received is that, OK fine, you want to move to California and you want to step back from the institutional role. Why be so public?”
The interviewer asked, “You say you tried to do this privately?”
Prince Harry said that he and Meghan Markle were forced to discuss their concerns publicly because of media leaks.
Harry explained, “And every single time I’ve tried to do it privately there have been briefings and leakings and planting of stories against me and my wife. You know, the family motto is never complain, never explain, but it’s just a motto.”
Cooper interjected, “There’s a lot of complaining and a lot of explaining… being done through leaks.”
Prince Harry explained how information was leaked to the media
Harry said that the lack of protection the palace provided was a “betrayal.”
“They will feed or have a conversation with the correspondent. And that correspondent will literally be spoon-fed information and write the story,” Harry explained. “And at the bottom of it they will say that they’ve reached out to Buckingham Palace for comment. But the whole story is Buckingham Palace commenting.”
He added, “So when we’re being told for the last six years, ‘We can’t put a statement out to protect you,’ but you do it for other members of the family… there becomes a point when silence is betrayal.”
