EX-FOOTBALLER Ryan Giggs was an idol on the pitch but an abusive “gaslighter” of his ex-girlfriend in his private life, a court heard.Behind Giggs public persona the former Manchester United and Wales international footballer, accused of headbutting his ex-girlfriend, had a “much uglier and more sinister side to his character”, Minshull Street Crown Court in Manchester heard.
Jurors were told the 48-year-old’s private life involved a “litany of abuse, both physical and psychological, of a woman he professed to love”.
Giggs denies using controlling and coercive behaviour against ex-girlfriend, PR executive, Kate Greville between August 2017 and November 2020.
He has also pleaded not guilty to assaulting the 36-year-old, causing her actual bodily harm, and of the common assault of her younger sister, Emma Greville, at his home in Worsley, Greater Manchester, on November 1 2020.
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Kate told police Ryan ‘gaslighted her’
Kate Greville says she realised she no longer wanted to be with Ryan Giggs as he had “cheated on me so many times”.
She says Giggs would “play the victim”, saying he was “heartbroken” and “I can’t live without you”.
Ms Greville says she told Giggs “I don’t want anything to do with you, please leave me alone”.
“It was absolutely draining,” she tells police.
Kate Greville ‘felt used’ by Ryan Giggs
Kate Greville says she “felt used” by Ryan Giggs during their on-off relationship.
“It felt like he was using me for sex,” she tells the officer.
She says she discovered Giggs was in a “full relationship” with a new girlfriend and she decided she was “done”.
She says Giggs would “scream” at her on the phone and email her saying: “Don’t you dare speak about me”.
Kate claims Giggs used intimate video to blackmail her
Ryan Giggs’ ex -girlfriend has recalled how she was once allegedly blackmailed by the footballer
She told court: “He sent me a nasty email once with blackmail and it was a video that we’d done.
“He’d say ‘I’m going to send these messages to people if you don’t reply’.
“I don’t know what the video was. It could have been sexual. I didn’t want to look. He’d want to have sex all the time. He didn’t force himself on me but he’d use sex to get to me.
“He’d send me really sexual messages. When we werent speaking he’d send sexual messages or pictures.
“He got the wrong end of the stick and thought I was seeing some guy.
“I got bombarded with messages.”
Kate felt ‘so alone and so isolated’
Kate decided to stay in Dubai for another week after staying at her friends.
She said: “I sent him a message on Whatsapp saying I’m going to get the flight. It was quite a nice message because I didn’t want any more abuse.
“I said ‘I’m really sad how this has ended, I’m not getting the flight with you in the morning’.
“We agreed to block each other and we didn’t have any more contact for a few days and then he started messaging my friend saying he missed me.
“I left it a few days and then he kept messaging Katie.”
Breaking down into tears, she said: “I didn’t message him straight away.
Kate said she ended up messaging him because he would not stop contacting her friend.
The relationship resumed in February 2020 on her return to the UK.
She added: “He made me feel so alone and so isolated.”
The below court artist sketch shows former footballer Giggs at Manchester Crown Court.
Kate told to leave by Ryan Giggs
Kate has told the court of how Ryan Giggs told her to leave Dubai and fly back to Manchester.
She started packing her things together at around 10pm.
Kate told the jury: “He stood in my way and tried to stop me leaving.
“I was pushing him and telling him to move.
“He was trying to stop me and grabbed my bag that was on my arm.
“I fell forward on my knee with my bag.
“He then let me go.
“I went to my friend’s house who lives in Dubai.”
Kate recalls ‘ultimate insult’
Kate Greville is now in the witness box recalling an incident with Ryan Giggs in a hotel room in Dubai.
She said they’d been out for some drinks when he turned on her and told her he didn’t like her when she’d consumed alcohol.
Kate fought back tears as she said: “I constantly felt attacked by him. He’s having a go at me again.
“I tend to not react to anything and not say anything.
“Then he said that I was just like his ex-wife and so he called me her name.
“He knew that would really upset me so he would say it quite a lot.
“He used to say that she used to make his life hell and that she had a problem with alcohol and that I was just like her.”
Kate tells court she’d been ‘naive to it all’
Kate told police how she began to realise Ryan could be having an alleged affair during a Christmas break in Dubai.
In a video of her statement to officers, Ms Greville continued: “Then we went to Dubai for Christmas and now I know he was in a relationship with two other girls.
“This Zara started messaging me and asked to follow me on Instagram.
“I knew he’d been seeing her so I split up with him. This is when it started to ramp up.
“Even though I had no proof and he hadn’t admitted it, I just knew. At the time, I’d just been naive to it all.
‘All the time he was still living with Stacey’, Kate Greville tells court
Kate claims Giggs told her he’d split with Stacey: “He’d tell me one thing and then I’d hear something else.
In a police interview played in court today, Ms Greville said: “It all came out in May 2016. It was horrendous. I got hounded by the paps, emails from the media.
“His ex-wife and daughter were sending me nasty messages.
“I wanted to protect him so said nothing had gone on.
“Then I found out he’d lived with Stacey the whole time.”
‘I was madly in love with Ryan’ says Kate Greville
Ryan Giggs’ ex-girlfriend told police how she was “madly in love” with the former Man U star.
She said: “He would say I was his soul mate. We would talk for hours.
“He helped me get out of that situation.”
There were “red flags” when she ignored Giggs and he would claim “she was “f****** someone else”.
“I was madly in love with him basically,” she added.
Kate recalls discovering Ryan had texted naked pics to other women
During another alleged incident, she recalled the moment she discovered he’d sent a naked picture to another woman.
Kate claims Giggs had walked out on her in a Dubai restaurant after she told him to come off his phone.
She told cops: “I was really upset, I don’t understand what happened. I went to my friend’s house crying my eyes out, I didn’t want to go back to the hotel room.”
The next day she said she received an email from an anonymous man who sent her the X-rated snap of Giggs which he’d found on his wife’s phone.
Kate said: “He said ‘is it him’. I knew it was him. I said ‘yes who is it’ but he didn’t tell me. He said he had kids and didn’t want it to blow up. It’s not nice when you see that and your whole body goes into shock.
“That was the first time I realised maybe he’s not what I think he is. I confronted him and he tried to make up some story. He eventually told me who it was and she is married and said it was from ages ago and must have found it on her phone.
“But I did a bit of detective work and I realised he’d sent it to me and it was only two weeks before.
Kate claims Giggs once threw her out of hotel suite naked
On one occasion Kate recalled how he even threw her out of a hotel suite, leaving her naked in the hallway with her belongings strewn on the floor.
It was sparked after she accused him of texting another woman while they were in a club.
During the police interview, she said: “I could see on his phone he was messaging someone.
“I asked him and he flipped. We were in a club but he flipped.
“He went up to my face and was screaming. He said ‘it’s my daughter I’m messaging’. He got up to leave and I ran after him.
“We got back to the hotel and got into bed. He flipped and grabbed me by my arm.
“He pushed me onto the floor. He took all my belongings and threw it all into the corridor and then shut the door and wouldn’t let me in.
“I was naked, all my stuff was in the middle of the corridor. I got back into bed and he wouldn’t speak to me and I ended up apologising to him.
“He said ‘I don’t want to be with you anymore’. He put it on me that it was my fault for accusing him. I started begging him to take me back.”
Kate told police Ryan ‘gaslighted her’
Kate Greville says she realised she no longer wanted to be with Ryan Giggs as he had “cheated on me so many times”.
She says Giggs would “play the victim”, saying he was “heartbroken” and “I can’t live without you”.
Ms Greville says she told Giggs “I don’t want anything to do with you, please leave me alone”.
“It was absolutely draining,” she tells police.
Ryan Giggs ‘bombarded me with sexual messages & threatened to send X-rated videos’
The court has heard how Kate claimed she would “constantly get abusive messages” in a “cycle of abuse and then silence”.
In a video of her police interview, which was played in court, she told the officer: “I’d get more abuse or sexual messages over this period of four months.
“He would make me feel like he was threatening my job. I was so worried he was going to ruin my career.
“Then I’d found out he’d been in a relationship the whole time. He came over and had sex. I felt used the whole time.
“He’d want sex every other day. He was having sex with a totally different girl.”
Kate claims Giggs used intimate video to blackmail her
Ryan Giggs’ ex -girlfriend has recalled how she was once allegedly blackmailed by the footballer
She told court: “He sent me a nasty email once with blackmail and it was a video that we’d done.
“He’d say ‘I’m going to send these messages to people if you don’t reply’.
“I don’t know what the video was. It could have been sexual. I didn’t want to look. He’d want to have sex all the time. He didn’t force himself on me but he’d use sex to get to me.
“He’d send me really sexual messages. When we werent speaking he’d send sexual messages or pictures.
“He got the wrong end of the stick and thought I was seeing some guy.
“I got bombarded with messages.”
Kate Greville says she struggled to accept Ryan is NOT her soulmate
Ms Greville told police how she found it impossible to break the cycle of abuse aimed at her.
Watching her interview, the court heard: “When I was in it I still felt like he was my world, I desperately wanted to have a family, to move in with him. I still thought he was my best friend.
“The whole time, before I came up to Manchester, when I realised that it was like the rug had been pulled from underneath me.
“This one person was telling me one thing but the actual reality was very different.
“Obviously I worked with him at the time. He was my soul mate – but the realisation that he wasn’t, I really struggled. It was really hard.”
Kate Greville ‘felt used’ by Ryan Giggs
Kate Greville says she “felt used” by Ryan Giggs during their on-off relationship.
“It felt like he was using me for sex,” she tells the officer.
She says she discovered Giggs was in a “full relationship” with a new girlfriend and she decided she was “done”.
She says Giggs would “scream” at her on the phone and email her saying: “Don’t you dare speak about me”.
Sketch: Ryan Giggs watching police video of ex-girlfriend Kate Greville giving evidence
The below court artist sketch shows former footballer Giggs at Manchester Crown Court watching ex-girlfriend Kate Greville giving evidence on police video.
Giggs is accused of controlling and coercive behaviour against Ms Greville between August 2017 and November 2020.
He is also charged with assaulting Ms Greville and causing her actual bodily harm at his home in Worsley, Greater Manchester, on November 1, 2020 and common assault against her younger sister, Emma, in the alleged same incident.
Kate tells court she’d been ‘naive to it all’
Kate told police how she began to realise Ryan could be having an alleged affair during a Christmas break in Dubai.
In a video of her statement to officers, Ms Greville continued: “Then we went to Dubai for Christmas and now I know he was in a relationship with two other girls.
“This Zara started messaging me and asked to follow me on Instagram.
“I knew he’d been seeing her so I split up with him. This is when it started to ramp up.
“Even though I had no proof and he hadn’t admitted it, I just knew. At the time, I’d just been naive to it all.
Giggs’ ex claims footballer was seeing two other girls at same time
Ms Greville told police how things got “really bad” for Ryan and ex-wife Stacey – but she eventually found out he had allegedly been seeing two other girls at same time.
Watching a video of her police interview, court heard: “Around Christmas time 2018 it started to get really bad with Stacey.
“I was trying to talk about it but he would shut me down. He would scream at me and leave my apartment, storm out.
“If we were in the car he’d leave me in the road. Maybe I didn’t say it in a great way but he would just flip so it got to the point where I just kept everything inside. There was no point.
“That was two days before Christmas.
“Now I know he was having an affair. He was in another relationship with someone, with two other girls at that time.
Kate claims she couldn’t go on night out ‘without being blocked’
Ryan Giggs’ ex Kate Greville says the footballer eventually forced her to stop socalising and going out.
She said: “If I went out on a night out with my friends, if I didn’t reply to him I’d either get ‘rude’ or he would block me.
“The amount of times he would block me, it was regular, like every time I went out.
“He would accuse me saying you’re obviously with someone, you’re with another guy tonight.
“It got to the point where I wouldn’t go out. All I would do is get anxious.
“If I messaged him he’d say ‘why are you messaging me, I’m out with my friends’.
“When I asked him when we going to start a family he said he never said that.
“I started thinking ‘have I made that up’. The reason I came back was because you said that.
“I came back to work for him. He set it up and said ‘why don’t you work for me, work for Gary, for the company’.”
‘Ryan’s ex-wife hated me’, Kate tells court
Kate Greville told police during her interview that she felt Giggs’ ex wife “hated her”.
In footage of the interview played in court, she said: “There was a massive problem with his ex-wife, she hated me.
“He kept the kids very separate and would often lie to them about where he was and if he was with me.
“It didn’t feel right why he wasn’t introducing me. I felt like he was making excuses.
“He was still saying he wanted a family because he got me to come back by saying he wanted us to have kids.
“Stuff didn’t add up, he would tell me he was somewhere and it didn’t add up.”
‘All the time he was still living with Stacey’, Kate Greville tells court
Kate claims Giggs told her he’d split with Stacey: “He’d tell me one thing and then I’d hear something else.
In a police interview played in court today, Ms Greville said: “It all came out in May 2016. It was horrendous. I got hounded by the paps, emails from the media.
“His ex-wife and daughter were sending me nasty messages.
“I wanted to protect him so said nothing had gone on.
“Then I found out he’d lived with Stacey the whole time.”
‘I was madly in love with Ryan’ says Kate Greville
Ryan Giggs’ ex-girlfriend told police how she was “madly in love” with the former Man U star.
She said: “He would say I was his soul mate. We would talk for hours.
“He helped me get out of that situation.”
There were “red flags” when she ignored Giggs and he would claim “she was “f****** someone else”.
“I was madly in love with him basically,” she added.
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