David Walliams has issued a formal statement following the publication of a joint investigation from the Guardian and ITV News accusing him of sexual misconduct.
On Tuesday, Walliams was identified as the “famous man” whose identity had previously been kept secret amid a High Court case involving an attempt to secure an injunction preventing publication.
The comedian and author lost his bid to secure the injunction last week and was given until yesterday to appeal the decision. Having failed to do so, ITV News and The Guardian were permitted to publish their report.
Their three-year investigation details allegations against Walliams dating as far back as 2003, including “preying on teenage girls and young women for sexual purposes.”
Multiple women accuse him of “grooming” them as teenagers, and one woman described her alleged encounter with Walliams at 15 years old as a “sexual assault.”
The Little Britain and Come Fly With Me creator is also accused of inappropriate conduct and sexual harassment at Britain’s Got Talent and at the publisher, HarperCollins.
Walliams has denied the allegations, and in a statement to the Guardian and ITV News he said: “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…
“I am not a sexual predator… I have not broken the law… I am devastated that some of the women I met ten to twenty years ago have now expressed hurt or anger towards me.”
Walliams had sought an injunction to prevent the publication of the allegations because of a risk that he would take his own life, after two previous suicide attempts.
Lawyers representing Guardian News and Media and ITN, which produces news programmes for ITV, said that the allegations they wanted to report involve the man’s alleged “abuse of power and status” to contact young women and try to engage in “inappropriate and exploitative sexual activities”.