Linehan was ‘proud’ that he grabbed a trans activist’s phone
The Fr Ted writer is appealing conviction for criminal damage after throwing mobile
TV WRITER and activist Graham Linehan was ‘proud’ to have damaged a trans activist’s mobile phone during a dispute, a UK court has been told.
Mr Linehan, 57, snatched the phone of Sophia Brooks and threw it to the ground outside the Battle of Ideas conference in Westminster on October 19, 2024.
The Dublin-born comedy writer, who helped to create hit shows including Father Ted and Black Books, flew in from Arizona to attend an appeal hearing against his conviction for criminal damage at Southwark Crown Court yesterday.
Prosecutor Julia Faure Walker, opening the case before Judge Amanda Tipples, told the court Mr Linehan gained ‘a sense of personal superiority’ from the incident, and expressed it in a post on X on October 22, 2024.
The post – in which Mr Linehan refers to Sophia Brooks as male – read: ‘I’m quite proud that I grabbed his phone and threw it
‘An ideological debate’
across the road. He was furious.’
Ms Faure Walker said: ‘Clearly, Mr Linehan was pleased by gaining a sense of personal superiority over a transgender activist.’
She added that the court was ‘not being invited to take sides in an ideological debate’.
‘While earlier events provide context, the prosecution would invite the court to focus primarily on what happened immediately before Mr Linehan took the phone out of Ms Brooks’ hands,’ she added.
The hearing was shown footage filmed on the activist’s phone in the moments leading up to the criminal damage incident.
While filming outside the venue, the activist approached Mr Linehan and asked: ‘Why do you think it is acceptable to call teenagers domestic terrorists?’
On the footage, Mr Linehan can be heard calling Ms Brooks a ‘porn-watching scumbag’, a ‘groomer’ and a ‘disgusting incel’, with the complainant responding: ‘You’re the incel, you’re divorced.’
Another video played in court appeared to show Mr Linehan grabbing or slapping the complainant’s phone out of their hands.
Mr Linehan’s lawyer Sarah Vine told the judge the complainant is ‘determined’ to see Mr Linehan convicted as part of a ‘campaign’ against the comedy writer for his anti-transgender activism.
The complainant, Ms Vine said, ‘is seeking to achieve a victory against Mr Linehan because he is a high-profile opponent, by misusing the justice system’.
She added: ‘The background to the matter before the court is the ongoing debate about the legal and social status of sex and gender.
‘The defendant subscribes to the view that human sex is not only universal, binary and immutable, but that it is a key organising category in society, which should not be subordinated to the subjective assertion of gender identity.
‘It is the case for the defendant that the allegation before the court is a part of, effectively, a campaign by a number of trans-rights activists – of whom the complainant is one – to discredit gender-critical activists as individuals for political ends.’
Mr Linehan was cleared by a judge at Westminster Magistrates’ Court last November of harassing Ms Brooks with a series of social media posts before and after the incident.
But he was convicted by district judge Briony Clarke of criminal damage over his actions with the mobile phone.
The Bafta-winning writer is a prominent anti-trans activist, and was accused of harassment for branding Ms Brooks a ‘domestic terrorist’, a ‘groomer’ and an ‘incel’ in social media posts.
In her verdict, Judge Clarke
Social media posts ‘deeply unpleasant’
said Mr Linehan’s social media posts may have been ‘annoying’ and were ‘deeply unpleasant, insulting and even unnecessary’, but they did not amount to ‘oppressive’ conduct.
Turning to the criminal damage charge, the judge dismissed Mr Linehan’s case that he had grabbed the handset and threw it away to prevent Ms Brooks committing a criminal offence, and said he could reasonably have known that it would be damaged.
He was ‘angry and fed up’, said the judge, before imposing a £500 fine on Mr Linehan.
The writer was also ordered to pay costs of £650 and a court fee of £200.
The appeal hearing at Southwark Crown Court is expected to continue today.