Jury retires to consider verdict in Ryan Giggs assault trial

The jury in the Ryan Giggs court case retired this afternoon to consider its verdicts.

The former Manchester United star, 48, has been on trial during the last two-and-a-half weeks over allegations he assaulted his ex-girlfriend Kate Greville, 38, causing her actual bodily harm, and of controlling or coercing her during their relationship between August 2017 and November 2020, which he denies.

He also denies assaulting the PR executive’s 26-year-old sister, Emma, in the same incident at his home in Worsley, Greater Manchester, on November 1 2020.

Judge Hilary Manley told the jury of seven women and five men at Manchester Crown Court that she required ‘unanimous verdicts’ on the three charges, adding that there was ‘no time pressure’ for them to deliver them to the court.

Giggs’ barrister, Chris Daw QC, told jurors at Manchester Crown Court Ms Greville was a ‘scorned’ woman furious at the defendant’s serial cheating throughout their on/off six-year relationship.

Her inability to accept his infidelity led to her falsely characterising Giggs as a physically and psychologically abusive boyfriend who made her a ‘slave to his every need and demand’, he said.

Giggs’s defence team said there was no evidence of him controlling anything Ms Greville did and claimed the alleged headbutt was ‘utterly incredible’ and actually an accidental clash of heads or faces.

Giving evidence, Giggs admitted his reputation as a ‘love cheat’ was justified and he had been unfaithful in all his relationships.

But he said he had never physically assaulted a woman or set out to control and coerce anyone.

Prosecutors say there are ‘two very different Ryan Giggs’ – the one in the public eye and the one behind closed doors.

Peter Wright QC said the former Wales manager ‘thinks, or thought, he could do whatever he liked in respect of his treatment of Ms Greville and that he could get away with it’.

He said the ‘sad history’ of the relationship revealed his ‘excesses were endured by her, excused and kept private’.

But he said all that changed on the night of November 1 2020 when he lost self-control and attacked her – and she had the ‘courage’ to stand up to him to expose the Giggs ‘behind the mask’.

Summing up the case on Tuesday, the judge asked the jury to consider if the relationship ‘veered off the rails’ due to Ms Greville’s inability to accept Giggs’s serial womanising, with her getting ‘her revenge by twisting and exaggerating their routine arguments’.

Or, she asked, was the relationship ‘much more sinister and darker’, involving a man exerting his power over an emotionally vulnerable woman, eventually leading to a loss of self-control?

 The jury has been sent home and will resume its deliberations at 10am on Wednesday.

In his closing speech yesterday, prosecutor Peter Wright QC reiterated there were ‘two very different Ryan Giggs’.

He said: ‘The one who is exposed for public consumption and the Ryan Giggs who exists on occasion behind closed doors.’

Mr Wright invited the jury of seven women and five men to conclude the defendant is ‘not a thing of unalloyed beauty but when the mask slips’ is the person capable of the charges he faces.

He added: ‘This case is about abuse of power of a man over another human being. It’s actually a tale which is as old as the hills.

‘It is about a man who thinks, or thought he could do whatever he liked in respect of his treatment of Kate Greville and that he could get away with it because the sad history of this relationship revealed that his excesses were endured by her, excused and kept private.

‘But all that changed on the night of November 1 when the basis upon which he operated disintegrated before his very eyes and the public persona of Ryan Giggs was exposed to public scrutiny.

‘When the woman he had controlled or coerced in their lengthy, fractious and volatile relationship had the courage to stand up to him.

‘When later his messages in all their ugly detail were exposed to a wider audience than that was intended and the intended target.’

Giggs’ expressions of affection across more than 19,000 messages exchanged between the former couple, enough to fill 56 lever arch files, were ‘utterly hollow’.

Mr Wright said: ‘The messages in this case, all of them, when contextualised, tell their own sorry tale of emotional manipulation, physical excess and control and coercion.’

He went on: ‘The reality is the truth has caught up with him (Giggs) and now it’s time. It’s time to pay the price. 

‘Let’s just consider what Kate Greville was prepared to do. She had the courage not only on the night but later in the crucible of the witness box to speak up. To reveal in all its deeply embarrassing detail what he had done and said to her in the period of their relationship.

‘You may think that speaking up was, for her, cathartic. The pent-up emotions of what he had said or done were to finally spill out. 

‘Scheming? Manipulative? Devious? Or a previously emotionally brittle vulnerable woman, previously malleable to this man, who had eventually reached her breaking point and was now empowered and able to speak out.’

He said a ‘microcosm of the entire case’ could be heard in the initial stages of the first 999 call to police from Emma Greville on the evening of November 1.

Mr Wright said: ‘In that microcosm what we hear is unlawful acts of violence by the defendant and an attempt by him to abdicate any responsibility on his part for what he has done by blaming another or the other.

‘The one on the receiving end of his excesses and when that fails emotional blackmail as a last resort. An attempt to avoid the consequences. The problem for Ryan Giggs is he had gone too far once too often to someone who was impervious to his pleading and threats.

‘And he had done it to Kate who was fortified by her recently found resolve and so each of them were then equipped to stand up to him, to disclose what he had done and what he was capable of. Eventually it had caught up with him… and he has no-one else to blame for it but himself.’

Mr Wright also referred to messages sent by Ms Greville to Giggs, which read: ‘You’re a liar. You’re a cheat. You’re a narcissist. You’re a manipulator. You’re controlling. You’re aggressive. You’re violent.’

The prosecutor said: ‘They encapsulate what he was like, a message he took no issue with at the time… The truth was known by both of them and encapsulated in that message.

‘He knew how to hurt her, demean her and violate her, ‘Give the therapist a call Kate’.

‘He said he was capable of scaring her or the object of his outrage about what he was capable of, something she knew only too well.’

Meanwhile, Christopher Daw QC, defending Giggs likened Mr Wright’s cross examination of the former Wales boss as a ‘bloodsport’.

He said: ‘One of the leading prosecution barristers of the last 40 years against someone who has limited education in terms of schooling. His talents mainly lay at his feet rather than anywhere else. It was no less a mismatch than putting Mr Wright in goal against Mr Giggs at his peak.

‘Mr Giggs was too embarrassed to admit he didn’t understand questions or words used by Mr Wright. It was easier for Mr Giggs to agree with what Mr Wright was saying… You may think he was like a rabbit in the headlights in the witness box against Mr Wright.

‘By the end of his evidence, you may have thought Mr Giggs would have agreed to anything Mr Wright said, if said in a forceful enough voice. You may think his career was not at at Manchester United but at Bolton Wanderers. It’s clear Mr Giggs did not follow what was being asked.’ 

The barrister refers specifically to the word ‘impetuous’, a word he asked Giggs if he knew the definition of. Mr Daw said the prosecution had chosen to focus their case on a small number of messages between Giggs and Ms Greville and these messages had to be put in context.

The barrister said: ‘There is no argument that Ryan Giggs and Kate Greville were compulsive if not addictive messagers. There were tens and tens of thousands of messages during the course of their six year relationship and would have filled 11 boxes of document files.

‘Human relationships come in various shapes and sizes. Some may last weeks, like holiday romances. Some last months and some last years, a tiny amount now last a lifetime… We don’t live in an era where that is the most common form of relationship.

‘Most relationships are rightly or wrongly much shorter but no matter how long a relationship lasts, what I suggest to us is every single relationship good, bad or indifferent is marked by arguments and fallings out.

‘There’s a reason why the marriage vows include the words ‘for better or worse’… It’s not all going to be sunshine and rainbows, it’s not realistic.

‘Couples, no matter how in love and happy they may be, fall out from time to time. Difficulty with commitment on one side or the other may cause problems and of course infidelity happens.

‘Some couples are fortunate enough to work out their problems in a calm and reasonable and friendly way every time. Some couples may be able to work through their problems without screaming rounds and having a cross word to say to each other, whether in messages or arguments in the kitchen in the home.

‘But what I ask you to reflect upon when you consider this is that as a basic principle of life and home affairs, couple’s say the most truly disgusting things when they argue with each other.

‘They can be deeply personal and hurtful, playing on emotions and insecurities and buttons each party knows is the right one to press in a particularly nasty fallen out, when in a hour of 24 things have moved on, regrets have come in and people get past such things.’

The barrister added: ‘What’s he not on trial for? He’s not on trial for being flirtatious. He’s not on trial for being a compulsive womaniser. He’s not on trial for being an adulterer. He’s not on trial for being a liar. As Aretha Franklin would put it, he’s not on trial for being a no good heartbreaker.

‘If they were crimes, he would be guilty of some of them but so would millions and millions of others. Being unfaithful to a wife or spouse is as old as the human race and if if unfaithfulness, flirtation or lying about infidelity were crimes, just think how many prisons we would need? You would need at least another five Strangeways.

‘In Saudi Arabia and Somalia those are crimes and you can be executed or stoned to death but this trial is taking place in England.

‘Do not treat this process as a moral process rather than a legal one. Morality plays no part in a court of law. The same applies for offensive and appalling language. That is not a crime.’

The jury is expected to be sent out later this afternoon to consider its verdicts.