{"id":278120,"date":"2026-06-22T01:24:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T05:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/22\/cancer-survivor-shattered-after-fruitless-fight-over-privacy-breach\/"},"modified":"2026-06-22T01:40:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T05:40:10","slug":"cancer-survivor-shattered-after-fruitless-fight-over-privacy-breach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/22\/cancer-survivor-shattered-after-fruitless-fight-over-privacy-breach\/","title":{"rendered":"Cancer survivor ‘shattered’ after fruitless fight over privacy breach"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cancer survivor ‘shattered’ after fruitless fight over privacy breach<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/health\/615979\/cancer-survivor-shattered-after-fruitless-fight-over-privacy-breach<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-06-22 01:24:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: www.rnz.co.nz<\/a><\/p>\n

Cheryl Horrell was furious when painful, private details were used to target her and other cancer survivors with advertising.<\/p>\n

After years of battling through the Privacy Commission and Human Rights Review Tribunal, the breast prosthesis companies found to have breached her privacy were ordered to pay her more than $10,000 in damages.<\/p>\n

Horrell, 75, said she felt helpless after the sole director of the companies, Richard Brady, told her they could not pay the full amount or could pay only in dozens of small instalments, despite another of his companies receiving more than $11 million in taxpayer funding.<\/p>\n

The tribunal order followed the misuse of information from the Canterbury-West Coast Cancer Society’s confidential client database in 2016, when breast cancer survivors were sent advertising from Naturalwear.<\/p>\n

In his evidence to the tribunal, Brady denied accessing the database but accepted he may have “somehow” used the names of people on the database.<\/p>\n

The society said it did not pursue the matter in court because of the cost and to avoid re-traumatising clients.<\/p>\n

Horrell, who suffered a head injury in 2016, missed the first marketing letter and said she was in no state to organise a class action, which she now believes would have been the best way to deal with the breach.<\/p>\n

When she received another advertisement in 2018, Horrell took her complaint to the Privacy Commission, demanding an apology from Brady and the deletion of all Cancer Society records.<\/p>\n

Details collected ‘clandestinely’<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n

The commission found Naturalwear breached the Privacy Act and interfered with Horrell’s privacy, and required the company to do privacy training.<\/p>\n

Dissatisfied, Horrell filed a complaint with the Human Rights Review Tribunal in 2020.<\/p>\n

Representing herself, she battled mountains of paperwork, court processes and legal nuance.<\/p>\n

In 2023, the tribunal found multiple breaches of the Privacy Act caused significant injury to Horrell.<\/p>\n

It stopped short of finding how the information had been accessed and by…<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cancer survivor ‘shattered’ after fruitless fight over privacy breach https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/health\/615979\/cancer-survivor-shattered-after-fruitless-fight-over-privacy-breach Publish Date: 2026-06-22 01:24:00 Source…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":278121,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/media.rnztools.nz\/rnz\/image\/upload\/s--7fJL3C3G--\/t_tohu-badge-facebook\/f_auto\/q_auto\/4JMU3PY_260619_Cheryl_Horrell_03_jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[30],"class_list":["post-278120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-privacy","tag-breach"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278120"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278120"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":278122,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278120\/revisions\/278122"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/278121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}