Newspaper can post video of prostitutes, racing chief Mosley

A scandal whose overtones of sex and fascism have engulfed the Formula One racing world heated up today when a judge in Britain allowed a newspaper to broadcast videotape said to depict motor racing chief Max Mosley in a Nazi-style orgy with prostitutes.

Publisher Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World pounced within minutes of the court ruling, adding an interview purported to be with a prostitute. She insisted that, despite Mosley’s denial of any Nazi overtones, the racing boss hired her and four other women to pose as Nazi guards and prisoners.

The website’s traffic immediately jumped, by 600%, as did the troubles of the 67-year-old Mosley. He is fighting to hold on to his job as president of the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile, world motor sport’s governing body.

The FIA announced a special meeting of its general assembly on June 3 in Paris, when Mosley’s future will be decided by secret ballot.

The scandal would likely have been a ho-hum tale of sex and bondage of little interest to jaded Europeans were it not for the fact that Mosley is the son of Oswald Mosley, the controversial founder of the pro-Nazi British Union of Fascists in the 1930s.

His mother was the former Diana Mitford Guinness, one of the celebrated Mitford society sisters. The couple was married in 1936 in the Berlin home of Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels, and Diana Mosley claimed until her death to have been “very, very fond” of Adolf Hitler.

Mosley had his own run-ins during his youth in defense of his father. But he has long sought to shed his past and pursue both a law career and his longstanding love affair with motor sports, becoming one of the most powerful figures in Formula One.

He has admitted having a sex session with the prostitutes but claims it had nothing to do with Nazism. He said he speaks German in parts of the video because one of his sex partners was German. The guard uniforms, he said, were not Nazi apparel but featured a modern German air force jacket, while the women were wearing not concentration camp uniforms but U.S. prison garb.

“It goes without saying that the so-called Nazi element is pure fabrication. This will become crystal clear when the matter comes to trial,” Mosley said after filing suit against News of the World for invasion of privacy.

“I don’t think any of this should affect my work on motoring safety, the environment or the sport,” he said. “I believe that 21st century adults do not worry about private sexual matters as long as they are legal and harmless.”

But News of the World and its lawyers insisted today that many questions remain about Mosley’s account.

“Why are German military uniforms worn? Why does he issue orders and threats in German to women who cannot speak German? … Why are the victims of these beatings in German made to put on sinister striped uniforms?” Tom Crone, News Group Newspapers Ltd.’s legal manager, said in a statement. “Why the head lice inspections, the forced shaving of body hair and the sinister references to inmates being housed in ‘facilities’?”

The newspaper itself was even more hard-hitting in its leading article on Sunday. “Formula One boss Max Mosley is a grotesque sexual deviant who acts out Nazi death-camp fetishes,” it proclaimed. “His feeble, bleating assertion that his sex acts are ‘harmless’ flies in the face of the evidence… . We absolutely refute and challenge his assertion that we have invented any elements of his depravity.”

Mosley apparently learned German when his parents sent him to study for two years in Bavaria as a child.

In one portion of the video, which the court said was made when one of the prostitutes “was able to conceal a camera in such clothing as she was wearing,” Mosley counts in German, according to a transcript also posted: “Maybe a few more beatings… . Eins! Swei! Drei! Vier! Funf! Sechs!” he says, as he spanks one of the women with a strap.

Later, he speaks English with a German-like accent. “Zey need more of ze punishment, I think,” he says.

Mosley had asked a court to order the News of the World to continue its voluntary removal of the video from its website after its original publication March 30. But Justice David Eady today declined, saying it was too late to protect his privacy – the material was already too widely available on the Internet.

“The dam has effectively burst,” the judge said. “I have, with some reluctance, come to the conclusion that although this material is intrusive and demeaning, and despite the fact that there is no legitimate public interest in its further publication, the granting of an order … at the present juncture would merely be a futile gesture.”

At the same time, the judge made clear that Mosley might hope to prevail in his lawsuit against the newspaper. If the edited video footage is considered proof that Mosley intended a Nazi scenario, he said, “it certainly is very weak.”

“It is accepted that a quasi-prison environment is part of the ‘S and M’ scenario, but it is said not to be representative of Nazism in particular,” Eady wrote. “If the matter were to come to trial, it may be that the court will in due course hold that there is nothing in the allegations of Nazi role play,” he said, although he emphasized it would not be appropriate for him to reach any such determination before the trial.

After the ruling, Mosley’s lawyers said their client intends to “vigorously pursue” damages against News of the World, the proceeds of which he will donate to the FIA Foundation.

Meanwhile, Mosley faces a flood of demands for his resignation as FIA president, including from leading Formula One drivers, sponsors and automobile manufacturers, Jewish organizations and automobile clubs around the world. The Automobile Assn. of America, a member of FIA, called the incident “distressing and embarrassing.”

“While this matter may be viewed as private by some, the damage to the image of FIA and its constituents is clearly public,” the organization said in a statement. “AAA has conveyed to Mr. Mosley that it would be in the best interest of all concerned if he were to step down.”

kim.murphy@latimes.com