David Walliams named as celebrity accused of sexual misconduct after failed High Court injunction
Sylvia Hui and Brian Melley
British children’s author and comedian David Walliams allegedly used his fame to groom girls and young women for sex, two British news outlets reported on Tuesday.
ITV News and The Guardian newspaper said they spoke with multiple women who accused Walliams of preying on them. One woman said he sexually assaulted her when she was 15.
Walliams, 55, denied the allegations. He had sought a court injunction to bar ITV News and The Guardian from identifying him in their reporting. His lawyers claimed that publication of sexual misconduct allegations would lead him to take his own life.
A judge rejected his injunction request last week, but protected his identity until late Monday.
“I am not a sexual predator,” Walliams said, according to ITV. “I have not broken the law.”
Lawyers for Independent Television News and The Guardian newspaper’s publisher told the High Court last month that the allegations they wanted to publish were about the man’s “abuse of power and status” and his attempts to contact a number of young women to engage them in “inappropriate sexual activity”.
Walliams’ lawyer, Sara Mansoori, earlier told the court that he had made a suicide attempt when he received letters from ITN and Guardian News and Media seeking his response to the allegations. He later made another attempt, she said, and he was recently admitted to the hospital for psychiatric care.
The case has drawn widespread attention in Britain because it highlights questions over public figures’ right to privacy and what media can report on the basis of public interest.
Gavin Millar, representing the media companies, has said that the allegations were gathered after “a wide-ranging and rigorous investigation” and that there was a strong public interest in publishing them.
“The defendants allege that, over a period of years, the claimant used his status and influence as a well-known public figure to establish contact with young women, some considerably younger than him, and that he engaged or sought to engage in seriously inappropriate conduct,” according to a summary of Tuesday’s judgment.
Some of the alleged conduct could amount to criminal offences if proven, it said.
Justice Matthew Nicklin dismissed the injunction bid, saying the legal measure would mean “an exceptionally serious interference” with the rights of the media companies.
He noted that the man had a “serious and longstanding psychiatric vulnerability” which must be taken seriously, and said a decision allowing the allegations to be published will substantially increase his risk of suicide. However, he added that the evidence did not “establish that suicide is inevitable”.
The man’s statements are “not a reliable basis for concluding that no future treatment or intervention could alter that risk,” the judge said.
