\n<\/p>\n
The Father Ted co-creator Graham Linehan has been cleared of harassing a transgender activist on social media but found guilty of criminal damage of their mobile phone outside a conference in London last year.<\/p>\n
The 57-year-old flew from Arizona to appear at Westminster magistrates court in person on Tuesday, where the judgment was delivered.<\/p>\n
Linehan denied harassing Sophia Brooks on social media between 11 and 27 October 2024, and a charge of criminal damage of their mobile phone on 19 October last year outside the Battle of Ideas conference in Westminster.<\/p>\n
Judge Clarke fined Linehan \u00a3500 and ordered him to pay costs of \u00a3650 and a statutory surcharge of \u00a3200. Linehan\u2019s lawyer, Sarah Vine KC, asked that he be given 28 days to pay the full amount.<\/p>\n
The trial heard that Brooks had begun taking photographs of delegates at the event during a speech by Fiona McAnena, the director of campaigns at Sex Matters, a UK gender-critical campaign group.<\/p>\n
Outside the event, the activist asked Linehan: \u201cWhy do you think it is acceptable to call teenagers domestic terrorists?\u201d<\/p>\n
In response, the court heard that Linehan had called Brooks a \u201csissy porn-watching scumbag\u201d, a \u201cgroomer\u201d and a \u201cdisgusting incel\u201d, with the complainant responding: \u201cYou\u2019re the incel, you\u2019re divorced.\u201d<\/p>\n
The judge found that Linehan had taken Brooks\u2019s phone because he was \u201cangry and fed up\u201d, and had damaged it by knocking it to the ground. She said that while the offence was not aggravated by the fact the complainant was transgender, it was because they were 17 years old at the time.<\/p>\n
She ruled that she was \u201cnot sure to the criminal standard\u201d that Linehan had demonstrated hostility based on the complainant being transgender. She added that she did not find the complainant \u201cwas as alarmed or distressed\u201d as they had portrayed themself.<\/p>\n
The prosecutor Julia Faure Walker told the court that Linehan had written \u201crepeated, abusive, unreasonable\u201d social media posts about Brooks, whom he referred to as Tarquin.<\/p>\n
Vine said: \u201cThe background of this case involves what I would describe as provocative conduct by the complainant, and the raising of allegations in the service of, broadly speaking, political point-scoring.\u201d<\/p>\n
She added that the costs to Linehan had \u201cbeen enormous\u201d, and resulted from a \u201cmomentary lapse of control\u201d which led to behaviour that \u201ccould not be described as beyond reproach\u201d.<\/p>\n
The comedy writer, who has well-publicised strong views on gender issues, said his \u201clife was made hell\u201d by trans activists, adding that the complainant was a \u201cyoung soldier in the trans activist army\u201d.<\/p>\n
The writer added: \u201cHe was misogynistic, he was abusive, he was snide. He depended on his anonymity to get close to people and hurt them, and I wanted to destroy that anonymity.\u201d<\/p>\n
He told journalists outside the court that he hoped the not guilty verdict would mean that \u201cpeople in the future won\u2019t be subject to those kind of tactics\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Father Ted co-creator Graham Linehan has been cleared of harassing a transgender activist on social media but found guilty of criminal damage of their mobile phone outside a conference in London last year. The 57-year-old flew from Arizona to appear at Westminster magistrates court in person on Tuesday, where the judgment was delivered. Linehan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35165,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[4935,4356,4498,2820,3711,19863,19862,6186,2481],"class_list":{"0":"post-35164","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crime-justice","8":"tag-activist","9":"tag-cleared","10":"tag-convicted","11":"tag-damaging","12":"tag-graham","13":"tag-harassing","14":"tag-linehan","15":"tag-phone","16":"tag-trans"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35164\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/35165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}