Walliams Case Tests Whether Suicide Threats Can Kill Press Freedom

A celebrity's legal team argued human rights law should block publication of grooming allegations. The judge refused, but the precedent attempt reveals a new silencing playbook.

David Walliams — comedian, Britain's Got Talent judge, OBE-holding children's author — has been named by the Guardian and ITV News as the subject of allegations spanning nearly two decades: that he used his fame to groom, pursue and harass young women, two of whom were 15 at the time. The investigation involved more than 100 interviews and years of reporting by the Guardian's Maeve McClenaghan and Rachael Healey.

The allegations are severe. One woman says Walliams pursued her after a fan event when she was 15 and that they were having sex by the time she was 17. Another says he contacted her on Myspace at 15 and later sexually assaulted her — sometimes communicating via her school email address. A third was warned at a party at Walliams' home: "You're very young, be careful." Walliams denies all wrongdoing and says he is "not a sexual predator." But the legal dimension is where this story cuts deepest into governance. When the Guardian and ITV sent pre-publication letters to Walliams in May, his lawyers reported he had attempted to take his own life. He was hospitalised, made a second attempt after absconding, and his legal team sought an injunction to block publication entirely. Their argument was unprecedented: that publishing would expose Walliams to a real and immediate risk of death, engaging Articles 2 and 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights — the right to life and freedom from inhuman treatment. A jointly appointed psychiatric expert found Walliams had an "elevated underlying risk of suicide and self-harm" and that publication would cause a "very substantial increase" in that risk. But the expert did not conclude suicide was an inevitable consequence. The judge ruled that the state's duty to protect Walliams' life was being fulfilled through psychiatric services, not by silencing the press. The court does not have a duty "to guarantee that suicide will not occur or to eliminate every residual risk." The judge's reasoning went further, probing the systemic implications: "If I rule in favour of this injunction, where will it end?" Had the injunction been granted, it would have silenced not only the Guardian and ITV News but effectively the women who came forward. It would also have created a template — any powerful person facing a public interest investigation could invoke self-harm risk as a legal shield against accountability. Walliams was given until 4:30pm Monday to appeal. He did not. The investigation published. The prior warning signs had been visible for years: Jonathan Ross joked at the 2004 British Comedy Awards that the ceremony, "like most 15-year-olds, is drunk, unpredictable and probably going home with David Walliams." In 2022, Walliams was dropped from Britain's Got Talent after a hot mic incident. In December last year, the Telegraph reported HarperCollins had dropped him over harassment allegations involving junior female employees. The pattern is familiar from other cases of powerful men and institutional silence. What's new is the legal mechanism attempted. Using human rights legislation designed to protect individuals from state violence as a tool to suppress journalism about alleged sexual predation is a novel form of legal silencing — and its failure in court matters as much as the allegations themselves.