The Sunday Telegraph issued an apology to Silverchair’s Daniel Johns today, after the paper claimed Johns frequented Sydney brothel, The Kastle, in a 2019 story.
In August 2019, The Sunday Telegraph ran a front-page story with the headline “King Of The Kastle”. The piece featured an image of Johns, with the caption “rocker Daniel Johns swaggers out of a notorious bondage dungeon after a two-week bender”.
Johns moved quickly to deny the report’s allegations, calling them “simply untrue”. The proprietor of The Kastle, known by the alias “Mistress Scarlett”, also denied that Johns was a customer.
“In response to today’s Daily Telegraph (sic) article, we state that Daniel Johns was not on the premises nor has been previously,” Mistress Scarlett tweeted.
“We’re unsure of the source of this false information. In our 30 year history, we’ve never revealed the identity of clients and take privacy very seriously.”
In September 2019, Johns commenced defamation proceedings against Nationwide News, arguing that he had “been gravely injured” by the piece.
This morning, eight months after the piece ran, The Sunday Telegraph published an apology to Johns.
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“On August 11, 2019, The Sunday Telegraph’s front page contained a photograph of musician Daniel Johns and alleged that he was swaggering out of notorious Sydney brothel, The Kastle,” a representative for the paper wrote.
“The story was wrong. Mr Johns was not leaving the brothel and The Sunday Telegraph accepts he has never been there at any other time.”
“Mr Johns was in the area because he had been visiting a friend who lived in the vicinity of The Kastle.”
“We retract the story and we wish to extend a genuine and public apology to Mr Johns and his family for the error and the harm caused.”
At time of writing, Johns has not yet commented on the newspaper’s apology.
Watch ‘Cool On Fire’ by Daniel Johns
