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3rd June 2023
05:07pm BST
Caroline Flack's mum said Schofield has already lost enough.
Caroline Flack's mum has defended Phillip Schofield as the presenter continues to deal with the fallout from his affair with a younger male employee at ITV and his exit from This Morning.
Caroline's mother, Christine, said ITV has learned nothing since her daughter took her own life in February 2020.
In an interview with BBC's Victoria Derbyshire, Christine said ITV isn't caring for Schofield who has told of feeling like there's nothing but "blackness" ahead of him.
Christine said: "If my employer didn't take care of me, there'd be all hell to pay. And there's not."
She said the abuse Schofield is facing is "relentless" and that it is similar to what her daughter Caroline faced.
"Every day she would try to be a bit stronger, which I should imagine Phillip is [doing]," Christine said.
She said the worse thing is the abuse doesn't stop.
"You get more and more thrown at you."
Christine said the public and press should lay off Schofield because he has already "lost his job and his world".
Schofield told The Sun the past week had made him understand how Caroline had felt before she took her own life.
"It is relentless, and it is day after day, after day after day," he said.
"If you don’t think that that is going to have the most catastrophic effect on someone’s mind… do want me to die? Because that’s where I am. I have lost everything."
He went on: "How much do you want a man to take? Are you truly only happy when he’s dead? This is how Caroline Flack felt, and it didn’t stop, and I know I’ve done something wrong, and I’ve owned up to doing something wrong, but constant friends texting me, ‘Mate, this is relentless, when’s it gonna stop? What’s the agenda?’ Someone said, ‘You’re being treated like Jack the Ripper.’
"I haven’t looked at a single thing, that would be the single thing. I took off all the apps, I haven’t looked at the news but well-meaning people come through, ‘Can’t believe they’ve said this.’ Still it comes, it is utterly relentless, uncontrolled, online."
Schofield quit This Morning a fortnight ago amid a fall-out with his co-presenter Holly Willoughby before being engulfed in revelations he’d had an affair with a younger man while on the show.
Willoughby is due to return to This Morning on Monday.
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