David Walliams Faces Police Investigation Over Alleged Sex Offences
The Metropolitan Police has opened an investigation into entertainer David Walliams over reports of alleged serious sexual offences. Detectives are also reviewing earlier media reports. Walliams denies breaking the law and says he is not a sexual predator. No charges have been announced.
The Metropolitan Police has launched an investigation into entertainer and children's author David Walliams over reports of "alleged serious sexual offences", the force said in a statement.
The Met said the allegations it is investigating are separate from those already reported in the media. As part of its inquiry, detectives are also "proactively reviewing that reporting to establish whether there is any evidence of offences".
The force said it had "received a number of allegations of non-recent serious sexual offences involving a man now in his 50s". It added that "those who have come forward are being supported by specialist officers".
No charges have been announced. The allegations are unproven.
Detective Superintendent Mike Cagney urged anyone affected to contact police. "We would encourage anyone who has been the victim of a sexual offence to come forward and speak to us, no matter when it happened," he said.
He acknowledged how hard that can be. "We know reporting allegations of this nature can be daunting, but specialist officers are on hand to provide support, answer questions and guide you through the process."
The police inquiry follows media reports published after Walliams lost a legal bid to stop the claims being made public. Those reports said several women had accused him of sexual misconduct.
Several of the women, who do not know one another, allege they were targets of unwanted sexual advances from Walliams. Some accuse him of "grooming" them when they were teenagers.
One woman now characterises an alleged encounter with Walliams when she was 15 as a "sexual assault". Walliams strongly denied he had any sexual contact with the girl.
The reports also claimed he had a sexual relationship with at least one junior employee at publisher HarperCollins, and pursued another. Other women alleged inappropriate behavior at ITV's Britain's Got Talent, such as inviting girls and young women to his dressing room.
Walliams rejects any allegation of criminal activity and says he has never engaged in the grooming of young women. When the claims first surfaced, he said he was "not a sexual predator" and had not "broken the law".
In a letter to journalists working on the investigation, he expressed some regret about his conduct. "I realise I did not always take people's feelings properly into account. That is something I regret," he wrote.
Walliams shot to fame in the early 2000s with the sketch comedy Little Britain. He later served as a judge on Britain's Got Talent and launched a best-selling series of children's books.
He drew a firm line at the central allegation. "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 wrote.
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