Charlotte Church today said she had been "sickened and disgusted" by the News of the World's behaviour as she and her parents accepted £600,000 in damages and costs for phone hacking.
The 26-year-old singer said "nothing was deemed off-limits" by the tabloid, which "bullied" her mother Maria into revealing details of her own self-harming and attempted suicide after finding out information by intercepting voicemails
She added that staff at the News of the World had been "prepared to go to any lengths" to cover up their wrongdoing, by destroying documents relating to the "industrial scale" of the hacking.
The singer said those responsible were "not truly sorry, only sorry they got caught".
Miss Church was speaking outside the High Court in London after a judge was told that she, together with her mother Maria and adoptive father James had settled their case, which had been due to go to trial today.
She said: "What I have discovered as the litigation has gone on has sickened and disgusted me.
"Nothing was deemed off limits by those who pursued me and my family, just to make money for a multinational news corporation.
"Of course, I was a teenager at the time and my parents were not in the public eye, they just happened to have a well-known daughter.
"Whatever I have had to go through, they have suffered as well. They have been harassed, put under surveillance, and my mother was bullied into revealing her own private medical condition for no other reason than they were my parents.
"Someone in a newspaper thought that was okay. How can that be, in any right-thinking society?"
She said "these people" had tried to turn the investigation into wrongdoing into an "interrogation" of her mother's medical condition, forcing her to relive the "enormous personal distress" she had been caused in 2005.
"It seems they have learned nothing, and I would have learned nothing more from an actual trial since it was clear that no one from News International was prepared to take the stand to explain their actions.
"In my opinion, they are not truly sorry, only sorry they got caught. "
She said her claim was not about the money and she would use her part of the settlement to protect herself and her children "from further invasions of our privacy".
The singer added that she would now be focusing her energies on assisting the criminal investigation and Lord Justice Leveson's inquiry "as well as others who are seeking to bring to justice those responsible for this appalling behaviour".
Lawyers for the family said she and her mother and father had been persistently “harassed” by the newspaper from 2002, when Church was just 16.
The full extent of the hacking would never be known, Mr Justice Vos was told, because “much of the data has been
destroyed” during an orchestrated cover-up by senior staff at the now-defunct tabloid.
Church’s solicitor Mike Brookes confirmed last week that Church and her parents had settled their claim against News Group Newspapers.
As the details of the settlement were formally announced at the High Court, Michael Silverleaf QC, for NGN, said the publisher accepted that the family “should never have had to endure what they have suffered”.
NGN agreed to pay the Churches £300,000 in damages and the same amount in costs, the highest payout to any of the 56 claimants who have settled their cases this year.
Max Clifford, the publicist, was given the highest payout when NGN agreed to pay him £1 million in an out of court settlement before the current batch of claims got underway.
Church sat next to Mr Brookes in court as he read out a statement detailing the years of harassment the family had suffered.
“The News of the World targeted Charlotte Church and her voicemail messages repeatedly and in doing so unlawfully obtained details of her family and friends, even her first teenage boyfriend,” he said.
“It began in 2002 when Miss Church was just 16 and continued for many years.
“We will never, of course, know the full extent of what they did because much of the data has been destroyed.
“Maria Church is vulnerable, with a complex medical history which the News of the World found out about.
“At her lowest moment the News of the World issued her with an ultimatum and coerced her into giving an interview about her self-harming and attempted suicide.
“The Churches would much prefer to have been left alone by the News of the World and never have had this happen to them.
"Charlotte was also regularly harassed and even placed under surveillance by the News of the World and those paid by them. They followed the every move of a teenage girl."
He said her parents' privacy had been "violated", adding: "The motivation for this intrusion into the lives of two essentially private and ordinary individuals was to make money."
Maria Church "felt she had no choice but to give the interview and was deeply traumatised by the publication of the story in the News of the World".
Mr Brookes praised "the courage and determination" of the family, saying their suffering was "the real story" that the newspaper never ran.
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