For the women who spoke to reporters over three years, the decision to come forward was not a single act but a long process, one that culminated this week in published allegations against one of Britain’s best-known entertainers. Now the Metropolitan Police have opened an investigation into David Walliams, the comedian and children’s author accused of grooming and sexually abusing girls and young women. Walliams, 55, denies the allegations and says he has not broken the law.
The accounts at the centre of the story are the most serious part of it. One woman told The Guardian and ITV News that Walliams sexually assaulted her at his London home when she was 15. Others said he groomed them as teenagers. The reports also included allegations that he harassed young female colleagues. The two organisations said they spoke to more than 100 people during a three-year investigation, with the allegations dating back as far as 2003.
Scotland Yard confirmed on Friday that it has received a number of allegations of non-recent serious sexual offences involving a man now in his 50s. In a statement, Detective Superintendent Mike Cagney urged anyone affected to come forward. The force noted that these new allegations are separate from those reported this week by ITV News and The Guardian.
The timing of the reports has weighed on public attention. They were published on Tuesday, one day after comedian Russell Brand was sentenced to more than 10 years in jail for rape and sexual assault.
Walliams responded in a letter to ITV and The Guardian. “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. “I am not a sexual predator … I have not broken the law.”
The investigative reports appeared only after he failed to stop the media from naming him. Walliams had gone to the High Court to block publication, but the judge, Matthew Nicklin, refused the injunction, saying it would be “an exceptionally serious interference” with the media’s rights.
The consequences have been swift. A spokesperson for the BBC told the AFP news agency that the broadcaster had taken down some shows involving him, including all episodes of Little Britain, the sketch show that made him famous. His literary agency, Independent Talent Group, said it was “no longer representing him in any capacity”.
That rupture with his publishers began earlier. HarperCollins dropped him last year, following accusations that he harassed female staff, which he also denied.
Walliams built his career on comedy, rising to fame through the sketch shows Little Britain and Come Fly With Me, and later serving as a judge on ITV’s Britain’s Got Talent. To a generation of young readers, though, he was known first as a storyteller. His children’s books, including Mr Stink, Gangsta Granny and The Boy in the Dress, have reportedly sold more than 50 million copies.
The police investigation now puts all of that under formal scrutiny. For the women whose accounts formed the basis of the reporting, the inquiry is the latest step in an ordeal that stretches back years. For readers whose children grew up on his books, the allegations have upended a familiar name from their shelves. And for anyone else affected, the Metropolitan Police message was direct: come forward. The inquiry is at an early stage, and what it finds will determine how much of this story is eventually tested in court rather than argued in the press.