Surprise! Last week, that “mystery UK celebrity” lost his bid for a press injunction, and this week, the Guardian published a lengthy piece about David Walliams’ predations on teenage girls. As it so often is with these celebrity predators, Walliams’ behavior seems to have been an open secret in the entertainment community for decades. You can read the Guardian’s full piece on Walliams here. Basically, they have several women confirming that Walliams groomed them from a young age (usually around 15) and several women confirming that Walliams behaved inappropriately in private and even professional settings.

…Alex is one of multiple women who allege Walliams abused his power and position as a celebrity to prey on them for sexual purposes when they were teenagers or young women, an investigation by the Guardian and ITV News has found. Some, like Alex, say their interactions with Walliams were traumatising and have requested that pseudonyms be used to protect their anonymity.

Most say they were over 18 when they had interactions with Walliams. But a woman whom the Guardian is calling Jade alleges that, like Alex, she met him when she was 15. She says that weeks after he first made contact, he invited her to his house and initiated sexual contact.

The allegations extended to his conduct in the workplace, with several sources describing inappropriate behaviour towards women at both the prime-time show Britain’s Got Talent (BGT) and his publisher HarperCollins.

In September, HarperCollins announced it would no longer publish Walliams’ extensive back catalogue, having dropped its bestselling author last year. Few reasons were given for the seismic move. The Guardian and ITV News can now reveal that the publisher severed ties with the star author after concerns were raised about his behaviour over several years, including an allegation that he had inappropriate sexual relationship with a junior female employee and pursued another.

Walliams denies any wrongdoing. Earlier this year his lawyers took a case to the high court to try to stop the allegations being published. The case was dismissed, so now the women’s stories can be revealed.

In a letter addressed to journalists working on this investigation, Walliams wrote: “Looking back, I realise that at times I behaved thoughtlessly towards other people I had casual sexual relationships with. I realise I did not always take people’s feelings properly into account. That is something I regret. And whilst a power imbalance is inevitable when one party is famous, abusing that power is something else entirely and it is something that 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.”

[From The Guardian]

Walliams is 55 years old – pretty long in the tooth to be newly focused on whether his behavior was “thoughtless.” And this is basically a flat denial of the accusations that, at the very least, there was an abusive power imbalance within his consensual sexual relations. Of course the credible accusations are much worse than that – this guy was grooming 15-year-olds and acting slimy towards half of the women in his orbit. But yeah, it’s not like the British press only realized this year that Walliams is a serial predator who mistreated and abused girls and women for decades. This has been common knowledge for many British people in publishing, entertainment and comedy. I’m so proud of the women who came forward, and I believe their stories 100%.

Photos courtesy of Cover Images.