To Westminster magistrates’ court, where Father Ted co-creator Graham Linehan appeared today to face charges of harassment and criminal damage against a teenage trans activist. The court heard today that the comedian smashed the phone of a transgender activist, 18-year-old Sophia Brooks, and made targeted ‘vindictive’ social media posts between 11-27 October 2024.
The comedy writer has been accused of damaging a £369 phone belonging to Brooks at a Westminster conference on 19 October last year. The prosecuting barrister Julia Faure Walker said today that the Irish comedian had began to post about the trans activist ‘relentlessly’ after falsely accusing Brooks of disrupting the LGB Alliance conference last year by releasing insects into the building. Faure Walker claimed Linehan had posted photos of Brooks – who was 17 then – first blaming her for the move before asking: ‘Does anyone know this man?’ The prosecutor said that Brooks was not inside the venue and ‘there is no evidence she was involved’. After this, the court heard that Linehan had tweeted at the Metropolitan Police to claim that Brooks had been present, describing the trans activist as a ‘malignant narcissist’.
The prosecutor told the court that the first time Linehan and Brooks had met in person was outside the ‘Battle of Ideas’ conference in Westminster. Brooks had been inside the venue, filming on a phone before being escorted out in the afternoon. The trans activist has claimed that a short time later, Linehan had approached to call the teenager an ‘incel’ and a groomer. Some hours later, Brooks filmed Linehan leaving the venue and asked why he had accused the activist of being a ‘domestic terrorist’, in reference to his social media posts. Faure Walker told the court:
He called her a ‘sissy porn-watching scumbag’. Still outside the venue, Ms Brooks approached him while filming and asked: ‘Why do you think it is acceptable to call teenagers domestic terrorists?’ She did not pose any physical threat. She was not committing any crime that needed disrupting. She was, rather, asking him to account for his defamatory and abusive posts about her. He was angry. He deliberately whacked the phone out of Ms Brooks’ hand. This caused damage to the phone. Mr Linehan was proud of what he had done. He tweeted a few days later, ‘I’m quite proud that I grabbed his phone and threw it across the road’. He was furious!
Before attending court today, Linehan posed outside wearing a sandwich board that read ‘There’s no such thing as a “transgender child”‘ on one side, with the other stating: ‘Keep men out of women’s sports.’ The trial continues…
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