Hero Brit cave diver branded ‘paedo’ by Elon Musk fights back tears as he says he’s been handed a ‘life sentence’
CAVE hero Vernon Unsworth told a court he "was given a life sentence without parole" after Elon Musk called him "paedo guy" on Twitter.
The Brit testified he felt "branded a paedophile" by the Tesla tycoon, despite Musk's assertion his tweet was not meant to be taken literally.
Unsworth, seeking unspecified damages from billionaire Musk, took the witness stand on the second day of the high-profile hearing in LA.
The case stems from the pair's very public squabble over last year's rescue of 12 boys and their football coach from a flooded cave in Thailand.
Unsworth's appearance came after Musk, the chief exec of Tesla and founder of rocket company SpaceX, concluded two days of testimony.
With his voice cracking with emotion, he said Musk's remarks about him on Twitter left him feeling "humiliated, ashamed, dirtied."
He said he felt so hurt he almost didn’t go to Buckingham Palace for the ceremony where the Queen presented him with an MBE .
"Effectively, from day one, I was given a life sentence without parole. It hurts to talk about it," Unsworth told the federal court.
The spat began while Unsworth was playing a leading role in the dramatic rescue of the football team in July 2018.
Musk, 48, had suggested he could build a miniature submarine to navigate the network of tight passages and lead the boys to safety.
But the British expert quickly dismissed it as a publicity stunt, adding Musk should "stick his submarine where it hurts”.
Musk then lashed out, calling Unsworth a "paedo guy" in a tweet which he deleted after a backlash from the public and pressure from investors.
Musk earlier apologised from the witness stand and expressed regret several times for his tweets which he downplayed as "off-the-cuff" retorts.
He insisted they were hurriedly written in anger and were never intended to be taken seriously.
Musk had told the court: "I just thought he was some random creepy guy the media were interviewing.
"I thought at the time he was unrelated to the rescue."
The slurs prompted the diver, a 64-year-old financial broker originally from St Albans, Herts, to sue the tycoon.
Defending his remarks, Musk said: "I assume he did not mean literally to sodomise me with the submarine, just as I didn’t literally mean he was a paedophile."
He added: "There are a lot of things that I say. Not all of it is completely thoughtful."
'BRANDED A PAEDOPHILE'
Unsworth, 64, who said he splits his time between the UK and Thailand, where he has a Thai girlfriend, spoke about the effect of Musk's remarks.
"I took it to mean I was being branded a paedophile," he testified.
However, Musk, 48, said the term "paedo guy" was a common epithet in South Africa, where he grew up.
"It's an insult, like saying mother-effer doesn't actually mean someone having sex with their mother," he testified.
Musk capped his two-day appearance by acknowledging under questioning that his net worth, mostly from stock holdings in SpaceX and Tesla, ran to about $20 billion.
"People think I have a lot of cash. I actually don't," he said.
Judge Stephen Wilson has said Unsworth's defamation case hinges on whether a reasonable person would take Musk's tweets to mean he was calling him a paedophile.
To win his lawsuit, Unsworth needs to show that Musk was negligent in publishing a falsehood that clearly identified him and caused him harm.
";Actual malice" by Musk does not need to be proven because the judge deemed Unsworth a private individual, not a public figure.
Although the case does not involve Tesla, Musk's Twitter habits have long been under close scrutiny, with the company's investors and regulators expressing concerns about his tweets.
With nearly 30m followers, Musk's social media account is a major source of publicity for the Palo Alto, California-based Tesla, which does not advertise.