David Walliams has been accused of preying on teenage girls, in two cases first initiating contact when they were 15 years old. The Little Britain star had used an injunction to block his name from being published, but it was dismissed in the High Court, and he has failed to appeal the decision.
According to a joint report from the Guardian and ITV, multiple women allege that Walliams abused his power and celebrity status to prey on them for sexual purposes when they were teenagers or young women. They say that they have been left traumatised.
In one example, Walliams is alleged to have preyed on a 15-year-old girl in the summer of 2007. After communicating with the girl online, he reportedly met her at a high-end shop and cafe in central London. He asked if she’d had sex before, and later walked her to a tube station and kissed her. ‘I let him,’ the woman has recalled. ‘I shut off completely.’
Walliams reportedly then invited the 15-year-old to his house, a five-storey townhouse in Belsize Park, lifted up her T-shirt, and sucked her breast. She pulled away, and he agreed to stop. Walliams denies that he had any sexual contact with this woman, and says he never engaged in grooming young women. His lawyers said that he believed those he had sexual contact with were 18.
The Guardian and ITV reports also say that dozens of sources at Britain’s Got Talent and his former publisher HarperCollins saw behaviour which they allege was inappropriate. Walliams was a judge on Britain’s Got Talent from 2012 to 2022. In 2022, HarperCollins announced that Walliams had sold more than 50 million books worldwide. In 2023 he published a book titled The World’s Worst Monsters.
Walliams sought to block the publication of these reports in court. His lawyers said that publishing the allegations was ‘highly likely’ to lead to an attempt to take his own life. The High Court allowed an interim injunction, but that has been overturned, and he has failed to appeal the decision. He is now in a psychiatric hospital.
Writing to Guardian and ITV journalists, Walliams said: ‘Looking back, I realise that at times I behaved thoughtlessly towards other people I had casual sexual relationships with.’
‘And whilst a power imbalance is inevitable when one party is famous, abusing that power is something else entirely and it is something I never did.’
He added: ‘I am not a sexual predator. I have not broken the law, but I am devastated that some of the women I met 10 to 20 years ago have now expressed hurt or anger towards me.’
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