Wednesday, August 10, 2022 – Gary Neville has been dragged into Ryan Giggs’ domestic abuse court case as Whatsapp messages and emails were read to the court.
Manchester Crown Court was told that Giggs met Kate Greville in 2013 after she helped promote his Hotel Football venue, launched with ex-United teammate Neville.
The former Wales coach is accused of using controlling and coercive behaviour. As well as ‘bombarding’ Ms. Greville, she claims, with up to 50 messages an hour and threatened to ruin her career.
She then later joined Giggs’ company GG Hospitality, owned by him and his former Manchester United team-mate, in 2019, and emails from that time sent from Giggs’ mobile phone and Ms. Greville’s work laptop were read to the court.
She claims he would get jealous and emails show he accused her of sending private messages and dating a man who also worked for the same firm owned by Giggs.
It was also mentioned during the trial that Neville’s assistant was present for an argument the couple had during a dinner at a hotel which jointly owned by Giggs and his former United teammate.
Giggs sent an email with the subject: ‘WTF!!! Blocking me’ after Ms Greville had blocked his calls on WhatsApp.
His follow-up email read: ‘F****** unblock me now.’
Ms. Greville said she had blocked Giggs after finding out he was in a relationship with another woman she named, Zara Charles.
Giggs then said if Ms. Greville did not unblock his personal WhatsApp number he would ‘chase her’ on the work WhatsApp group.
Ms. Greville said: ‘It scared me what he would send and how it would make me look to everyone else.
‘He could send anything because he was not rational. He could potentially send something of a very private nature, of a very personal nature, something that would embarrass me.’
Jurors were also asked if they had any personal connection to Sir Alex Ferguson, former defender Neville or executive David Gill – sparking speculation the trio could play a role during the trial.
In another instance, Neville’s name also cropped up when she and Giggs met friends including his former teammates’ personal assistant for dinner at the Stock Exchange Hotel – part-owned by the defendant and Neville – for dinner.
She said she was already planning to leave Giggs at a later date when he was due to be away with the Wales football team and she had signed for a flat in secret. She planned to speak to a lawyer about their dog.
Ms. Greville said the argument with Giggs started after she told a friend that a man had asked her out for a date.
She said Giggs asked her why she did not tell the man that she had a boyfriend and he was ‘angry’.
She told the court: ‘I said to this guy ‘I can’t believe you have asked me out, you have a girlfriend.” Mr Wright asked what was the response from Giggs. Ms Greville replied: ‘It was ‘why didn’t you say you had a boyfriend?’.
She then told the court: ‘He was angry. He kept having a go at me. He wanted me to agree with him. I was not prepared to do that. I stood up for myself.’
Ms Greville told the court Giggs kept telling her to apologise.
‘I stood my ground and he stood up and stormed out,’ she said.
‘He left me at the table. I sat there in disbelief that he had managed to twist this and turn this on me.’
Ms. Greville said she sat there for 10 minutes ’embarrassed’ before going up to their hotel room where Giggs had packed up her belongings.
She explained: ‘He had packed up all of my things and said he wanted me to get out. He was basically saying he was finishing with me and he didn’t want anything more to do with me.
‘I knew everything that he had done. I had the proof for the first time ever because he had always managed to convince me the whole thing was in my head and I was going crazy.
‘I was upset at that point. I had kept all that inside me all along.
‘I showed him some of the messages I had seen. I had taken screenshots, there was a lot. He said what I was saying was not true.
‘I said ‘It’s there, you can’t deny it any more. Then he got in my face and screamed and told me to get out.
‘He was very drunk and very angry.’
She said Giggs had been ‘screaming’ at her during their argument at the hotel and that she had ordered an Uber from the hotel.
Ms Greville said she then phoned her sister and asked her to ‘get my stuff and the dog’ into her car. She returned and was upstairs packing before 10 to 15 minutes later she claims she saw lights outside as Giggs arrived with his housekeeper and a hotel concierge.
Giggs started unloading her belongings in bin bags from her car at the front of the house and blocked her vehicle with his own car, Ms Greville also told the court.
‘I was really upset at this point,’ she said. ‘I was saying: ‘Ryan, please let me go… I just want to go’.
‘I was pushing him… trying to hold him off from getting things out of the car. I hadn’t seen him that angry before. He was drunk.
‘I know the whole situation had sobered me up. I had had a few drinks… but what had happened had cleared my head.’
She said Giggs was ‘throwing’ out her belongings and she was telling him she just wanted to go to her father’s home.
‘I was saying, ‘Please. I just want to go to my dad’s. I just want to take the dog.’ I was obviously very upset, he was my absolute world that dog.’
The pair then grappled over Ms. Greville’s phone in the hallway of the house and inside an adjacent utility room.
Ms Greville continued: ‘He pushed me backwards, I ended up being on my back in the utility room. I was on my back on the floor with my phone in my hand.
‘Ryan was on top of me. He’s pinning me down on the floor and trying to reach for the phone in my hand.
‘I was trying to do everything I could to get him off me. I was shouting my sister for help: ‘Get him off me’.’
Kate Greville said her sister Emma grabbed Giggs by the waist to pull him off but he pushed his arm back to try to get her off him and it is claimed he had hit her in the jaw.
Giggs managed to grab Ms Greville’s phone, pushing her head into the floor as he got off her, she said.
Ms Greville said Giggs told her he had called the police and was going to tell the officers Ms Greville had attacked him and was a ‘psycho’. She added that he was trying to ‘bait her’ when the moved to the kitchen and this is when she claims he ‘headbutted’ her.
She also told Manchester Crown Court, he ‘came at me from nowhere’ during a row over her finding evidence of eight alleged affairs ‘going back many years’ on his iPad.
Ms Greville said her lip ‘instantly swelled’ during the incident at his home in Worsley, Greater Manchester, in November 2020, and that she believed she had also broken her elbow after he pinned her to the floor in their utility room as he tried to snatch her phone from her hand.
Ms Greville told the court that, during the incident, Giggs moved into the kitchen and refused to give her back her phone.
She said: ‘I said ”I’m glad the police are coming because you attacked me and I’ll tell them exactly what happened”. That’s when he came up to my face and headbutted me. He came at me from nowhere, grabbed me by the shoulders, and headbutted me in the face. I said ”I can’t believe you’ve just done that”.
‘I was in shock and fell backwards, my lip instantly swelled so I put my hands over my mouth and I was really worried because I could taste the blood and thought he had split my lip open. ‘All the other times he had hurt me, this was different, he really wanted to hurt me, he looked me straight in the eyes and headbutted me.’ she concluded.
.jpg)
0 Comments