Father Ted co-creator Graham Linehan grabbed a transgender woman’s phone and threw it across a road while calling her “a groomer”, “a disgusting incel” and a “sissy-porn watching scumbag”, a court heard.
The five-time Bafta award winner, 57, is on trial at Westminster Magistrates Court accused of harassing transgender woman Sophia Brooks, 18, and causing criminal damage to her phone costing £369.
The criminal damage charge relates to an alleged incident at a festival, named Battle of Ideas, on October 19, last year. The harassment charges relate to messages posted online by Linehan between October 11 and October 27 last year.
Prosecutor Julia Faure Walker told Westminster Magistrates Court Linehan posted messages about the victim on social media “relentlessly” and added: “These posts were not merely irritating or annoying, but oppressive and unacceptable.
“The purpose of these posts, say the prosecution, was not merely to relay events, to express political opinion, to criticise, to help identify perpetrators or to solve any crime. Rather they were verbally abusive and vindictive and reflected Mr Linehan’s deep disliking of Ms Brooks. These posts were not provoked by Ms Brooks. The posts were unsolicited.”
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Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)
Ms Faure Walker added: “It is not in dispute the defendant sent the relevant social media posts. It is not in dispute that the defendant seized and threw the phone of Ms Brooks.”
The prosecution outlined the alleged criminal damage incident involving the phone, which they said occurred after Ms Brooks approached Linehan while filming and asked her why he had previously accused her of being “a domestic terrorist” in an online post.
They claim that he responded: “Go away groomer, go away you disgusting incel” and called her “a sissy-porn watching scumbag”.
Ms Walker, who identifies as bisexual, was aged 17 at the time. Ms Faure Walker added: “She did not pose any physical threat to him and was not breaking the law.
“He did not answer the question. He deliberately whacked the phone out of Ms Brooks hand. This caused damage to the phone.”
She added Linehan later posted a message online saying he was “proud” of what he had done. Ms Faure Walker also read a number of messages Linehan posted online about the victim, including: “Does anyone know this man?”.
He also described her as “a deeply disturbed sociopath” and accused her of having some involvement in an alleged homophobic attack in which thousands of insects were released at an LGBT Alliance event at the Queen Elizabeth Conference Centre in Westminster, which Ms Walker denies any involvement in.
The court heard Linehan also referred to her as a “sociopathic student” and referred to her as “Tarquin” – which the prosecution said was his derogatory term for her and he Linehan admitted was in relation to her “poshness”.
He also allegedly retweeted a social media post calling her a “deeply disturbed sociopath” and posted others calling her “absolute psycho” and “psycho posh kid”.
Linehan also accused his alleged victim of carrying out “domestic terrorism”. Linehan, who was wearing dark blue chinos, an open collared white shirt and a grey blazer, today entered the dock smiling at supporters in the public gallery. After sitting down he put on a pair of glasses and began reading a pile of documents.
He was later handed a court issued hearing aid in order to help him listen to proceedings from behind the thick glass of the dock and spoke to confirm his name, age and address.
At one point, the prosecution opening had to be halted when the device’s battery ran out. Linehan was subsequently allowed to leave the dock and sit inside the main court.
Linehan’s trial at Westminster Magistrates Court is scheduled to last two days.
It comes just two days after he was arrested on unrelated matters after landing at Heathrow on a flight from Arizona on Monday. Linehan was arrested and questioned by police over three “joke” tweets he made about trans people.
Olympic swimmer Sharron Davies was spotted outside Westminster Magistrates Court this morning, as were a number of supporters, including one holding a sign saying “Down with this sort of thing” in reference to a catchphrase from his hit TV show Father Ted.
As well as Father Ted, Mr Linehan, who was born in Dublin and survived cancer in 2018, also wrote hit TV shows The IT Crowd and Black Books.
He won a lifetime achievement award and penned a memoir, Tough Crowd: How I Made and Lost a Career in Comedy, which was published in October 2023 and reached number ten on the Sunday Times bestseller list.
But he has become best known as a vocal critic of the trans-rights movement in recent years and has previously claimed that his career and marriage have been destroyed over his gender-critical views.
Sophia Walker also took to the stand to give evidence against Linehan, who sat directly across from her inside the court.
Ms Walker, who said she began using the name Sophia “in about 2021, 2022” said Linehan’s online messages caused her to feel “alarm and distress”.
She added: “I was being branded a sociopath by a relatively famous person who had more than 500,000 followers, any of which could see his posts and cause great harm to me.”
She said she had never used the name Tarquin and it is not her birth name. She said she understands it to be a name Linehan uses to relate to her poshness.
Ms Walker said she attended the Battle of Ideas conference as a guest having bought a ticket.
She alleged an activist linked to the LGBT Alliance, stormed up to her after she saw her taking photos of panellists at the event.
Ms Walker said: “She stormed up to me with, I believe, a brochure from the event in an attempt to obscure my camera.
“About five or six people were filming me afterwards. She stormed up to me twice. One of them is videoed.”
Ms Walker said she was subsequently escorted out of the event, at Church House in Westminster, by security.
“About 20 minutes later Mr Linehan crossed the street with his phone recording. He called me a groomer and asked me how many kids I’d groomed.”
Asked if she said anything to him before that, she said: “No”.
Ms Walker added: “He then walked into the Battle of Ideas conference. He called me an incel and stormed off.
Asked what she believes incel to mean, she said “involuntarily celibate”.
Asked what gender the term is aimed at, she said: “male”.
Asked what she understood that term to mean, she replied: “Someone who does not have the privilege of having sexual intercourse.”
Later that evening Ms Walker said she saw Linehan outside the event.
“I asked him why he thought it was acceptable to call teenagers domestic terrorists online.
Asked if he gave any explanation, she said “no”.
“I believe he called me a groomer and told me to go away.”
Ms Walker said she felt “distressed” as she added: “I’m not a groomer”.
Asked what she understands a groomer to be, she said: “Somebody who takes advantage of the naivety of children to do things like sexual favours and other exploitation.
Ms Walker said she asked him why he called her a groomer, but added that he did not tell her.
She added: “I believe he called me a groomer again. I believe he also called me a sissy-porn watching scumbag.”
Asked about the term, she said: “Sissy porn is a type of genre of porn where cis-gendered makes cross dress.
Asked if she had ever expressed any interest in the genre, she replied: “No”.
She admitted replying: “You’re the incel, you’re divorced”.
She added: “He responded with more insults. He looked angry.
Asked if she posed any physical threat to Linehan, Ms Brooks said: “I don’t believe so”.
She added: “He grabbed my hand and forcefully gripped my phone out of it. He put my phone behind his back and refused to give it to me.
“I demanded he give me my phone back and after he realised I wouldn’t relent he said: ‘Go and get your f******* phone’ and threw it into the road.”
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