Iris Robinson's request for a privacy injunction will be held in private. (Credit: BBC News, screenshot)

Iris Robinson is seeking a “long-term” injunction to protect her “medical details” from being reported by the media, The Guardian reported.  She also wants to “prevent future surveillance,” and both photo and story reporting on her treatment.  She is a former politician and the wife of Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party leader Peter Robinson.

The injunction will be determined “behind closed doors” because the judge, Sir Declan Morgan, expects the hearing to “inevitably involve the discussion” of Robinson’s medical details, the very information she is trying to keep private.

By keeping the hearing private, information can’t be leaked via Twitter or other social news sites, “even with reporting restrictions imposed,” according to The Guardian. 

The judge added that even if the number of people who might see the information published on Twitter is smaller than that of a newspaper’s readership, Twitter and other social networking sites “may be outside the jurisdiction of the court.”

In late December 2009, Robinson stepped down from her post as a Parliament member and a member of the Northern Ireland Assembly, but she attributed her leaving politics to “a battle with depression,” the Belfast Telegraph reported.

She “admitted an affair with a 19-year-old,” in January 2010, the AFP reported.   According to the BBC, her husband, Peter Robinson, claimed that she “tried to kill herself while suffering depression after she had an affair. ”

The Guardian reported that Robinson “issued a writ for breach of confidence/misuse of private information, harassment and breach of her rights after The Sunday World newspaper published articles and photographs of her in London.”

According to the BBC, an “unidentified doctor” reportedly advised the court that if the media were let in on her hearing, it may “increase the risk of self harm or suicide.”

See iMediaEthics’ previous reports on injunctions here.