Graham Linehan, the writer and campaigner, is on trial Westminster Magistrates’ Court for harassment and criminal damage. The agreed facts of the case are on the record. Between 11 and 27 October 2024 Linehan sent a number of tweets about the male Trans Rights Activist, Sophia Brooks. On 19 October, Brooks sought Linehan out and confronted him. Linehan responded with verbal abuse. During their final interaction on that day, Linehan grabbed Brooks’ phone and threw it across a road. The Crown Prosecution Service allege this caused £369 of damage.
Below are the prosecution and defence cases as I understand them to be. The text below has been compiled from my notes and other sources after hearing both cases made in court, but there are important disclaimers to add. The text has been edited for clarity and length. It is neither the totality of the prosecution or defence case, nor is it a verbatim account of what was said in court. It is merely for your information. Any mistakes are my own. The images below are merely to illustrate this piece – they are either mine, lifted from footage shown in court or are within embedded tweets.
If you want to read the compiled live tweets of the three days of evidence – go to the live tweets page of this website. Otherwise, read on…
The Prosecution Case
Graham Linehan faces two charges:
- Harassment of Sophia Brooks, between 11 October 2024 and 27 October 2024, contrary to Section 2 of the Protection from Harassment Act 1997.
- Criminal damage of Brooks’ mobile phone on 19 October 2024, contrary Section 1 of the Criminal Damage Act 1971.
It is not in dispute that Linehan sent the relevant social media posts between 11 October and 27 October 2024 nor that he seized and threw the phone of Sophia Brooks.
Sophia Brooks is now 18 years old, but at the time of the events was aged 17.
On Friday, 11 October 2024, the LGB Alliance were holding a conference. The LGB Alliance are a political activist group, whose views Brooks does not agree with. Brooks attended the venue and stayed outside. The event was disrupted when some girls inside the venue released crickets. They were escorted out. Sophia Brooks was not one of them: she had stayed outside. There is no evidence she was involved.
Despite there being no evidence that Sophia Brooks participated, Linehan linked her to it. On 11 October 2024, in response to a post about the event, Linehan posted, “Wasn’t Fred Wallace present? Was this guy with him, by chance?”, next to an image of Brooks.
Freda Wallace is older person whom Brooks was seen with, in the context of activism on transgender rights. Thereafter, Linehan posted about Brooks relentlessly. The posts amount to harassment, in being conduct targeted at an individual, calculated to produce alarm or distress. These posts were not merely irritating or annoying, but and were rather oppressive and unacceptable.
These posts were not provoked by Brooks online: she was not in conversation with him when he started to post about her. The posts were unsolicited. These posts were not from Linehan’s personal experience with Brooks. They had not met when the posts started.
The purpose of the posts was clearly not merely to relay events, express political opinion, criticise, help identify perpetrators or try to solve any crime. Nor is it a case that these posts merely presented ideas that may shock, disturb or offend. Rather, they were verbally abusive and vindictive; they reflected Linehan’s deep disliking of her.
Examples of posts referring to Brooks
Posie Parker is a woman’s rights’ activist. On 11 October, after referring to “this guy” wearing “Posie Parker merch to try and invade let women speak events”, Linehan said, “This is the same tactic the homophobic brats used today at the LGB Alliance conference”
In a further post, “Listen @metpoliceuk bringing these three men in would save a lot of legwork and hassle for your officers. I could put you in contact with several people who have been harassed or threatened by them…. I believe these three men all had knowledge of the recent homophobic attack on a meeting gay, lesbian and bisexual people. Will they take seriously this example of domestic terrorism, in which I believe some silly children were doing the bidding of some very dangerous men…” (Sophia Brooks being one of the “three men” Linehan was referring to).
On 13 October 2024, he asserted that Brooks was “behind countless episodes of harassment of women and gay men both online and off. He is a deeply disturbed sociopath and I believe he had some involvement in Friday’s homophobic attack”.
On 14 October 2024, he posted, as if quoting what someone had said to him, “Graham, don’t you think you could have softened some of your language with these scumbag, grooming, homophobic, sociopathic, sadists?”
On the same day, he posted, that “Tarquin/‘Sophie’ like all malignant narcissists, enjoys boasting about his skillz so much that I would not be surprised if he incriminates himself….”, posting a recorded online conversation of her. Tarquin, here, is Linehan’s term for Brooks. Then later, referring to her as a “sociopathic student”.
Hey @metpoliceuk here is a recording of the man who is behind countless episodes of harassment of women and gay men both online and off. He is a deeply disturbed sociopath and I believe he had some involvement in Friday's homophobic attack. Note "You will pay" in the video. pic.twitter.com/91le5K0vKp
— Graham Linehan (@Glinner) October 13, 2024
On 19 October 2024, Linehan and Brooks met for the first time in person, outside the Battle of Ideas conference.
During the afternoon, Brooks had been inside the venue. She was taking photographs or videoing with her phone. No evidence has been produced that she was doing anything materially beyond that, before being approached and eventually escorted out, at about 3.15pm.
Brooks recalls that about 20 minutes later, Linehan approached her with his phone, recording her and calling her a groomer and asking how many she had groomed. He also called her an “incel”.
A few hours later, she was outside the venue, near the entrance. Linehan exited with other people. While filming with her phone, Brooks called out his name, “Graham” and asked why he had called her a “domestic terrorist”. This was, clearly, referring to the phrase that Linehan had used in his posts about her.
Linehan could have explained to her why he used this expression or even ignored her and walked away. Rather, he responded in a way which is indicative of his extreme personal animosity towards her. He said, “Go away groomer”, “Go away you disgusting incel”. He called her a “sissy porn-watching scumbag”.
Still outside the venue, Brooks approached him while filming and asked, “Why do you think it is acceptable to call teenagers domestic terrorists?” She did not pose any physical threat. She was not committing any crime that needed disrupting. She was, rather asking him to account for his defamatory and abusive posts about her.
Linehan was angry. He deliberately whacked the phone out of Brooks’ hand. This caused damage to the phone. Linehan was proud of what he had done. He tweeted a few days later, “I’m quite proud that I grabbed his phone and threw it across the road. He was furious!” Clearly, he was pleased from gaining a sense of personal superiority over someone on the opposite side of a debate.
This is Tarquin, the abusive psycho incel who also stalks Let Women Speak/LGB Alliance events. We handed in a 400-page evidence file on him and the police let him go. Conman and convicted sex offender Stephanie Hayden is giving him legal advice. pic.twitter.com/QmHaRlj5l5
— Graham Linehan (@Glinner) March 18, 2025
Brooks called the police soon after the criminal damage incident. After the conference, Linehan resumed the posts about Brooks in a similar way to before.
On 19 October, he wrote: “Was interesting to meet Tarquin today. Absolute psycho”. He re-tweeted his post referring to Brooks as a “deeply disturbed sociopath”, and wrote: “This is the psycho posh kid from today…” with an image of Brooks. He said: “We had to literally walk him to a group of policemen outside the House of Commons”, whereas in fact Brooks was on the phone to police.
Also on 19 October, Linehan posted, referring to another person – Freda Wallace – with Brooks: “Couldn’t hack it as a gay man, now he’s an alcoholic hanging around with a 17-year-old sociopath who thinks he’s a girl”. The “17-year-old sociopath….” must have referred to Brooks. Clearly, he knew that she was only 17 years old.
In another post, referring to an image of Brooks, Linehan wrote: “Watch how Buffalo Bill uses the camera to hide his face.” In response to a post from “Terfipedia”, he said: “here he is defending Fred Wallace’s psycho mate Tarquin, who puts phones in peoples faces in the hope of getting footage he can bring to the police.”
He referred to Brooks as Fred Wallace’s “sociopath friend”. On 22 October, he said about Brooks:“He likes to handle people and then complain about being touched himself” and “Why are you calling a man with long hair ‘her’?”
On 23 October, when another user asked who the person was, Linehan said: “Have you not been following? He’s Fred’s severely disturbed mate who was harassing people at the Battle of Ideas.”
In relation to the name, Tarquin, Linehan said: “we named him that”. When someone asked, “That his real name?”, Linehan said: “No. It’s a reference to his poshness”.
More Tarquin footage from the weekend. pic.twitter.com/v42X306fmx
— Graham Linehan (@Glinner) October 22, 2024
Linehan posted another tweet saying: “Didn’t want people to miss how Tarquin’s evening ended on Saturday”, with footage of what he claimed was them walking Brooks to police. It was in fact Brooks who had called the police.
Linehan tried to get information about Brooks: “We believe Tarquin is studying computer science somewhere in London. If you know him and want to help to stop him harassing people, please get in touch”. He also alluded to a particular university and course.
In response to a post about the ambit of “harassment”, Linehan said, “Sorry what woman, mate? This is a porn-addicted man, like you.”
Another user pointed out, accurately, that Linehan had admitted to throwing a phone of a young trans protestor across the road. The user accused Linehan of “relentlessly stalking her online”. Linehan replied, “Well, the thing you’re leaving out, Aiden, is that Tarquin is a sociopathic misogynist who harasses women. Just like you!”.
In response to a user asking, reasonably perhaps, “in what world can a 56 year old celebrity speak to a 17 year old girl like this and still get platformed…” Linehan responded, “He’s been 17 years old for a number of years and was harassing women at a conference. He was also behind the recent attack on a meeting of gay and bisexual people in which thousands of insects were released…”. There is no evidence of Brooks’ claiming to be 17 years old for a number of years. Nor has evidence been produced that Brooks harassing women at the battle of ideas conference. She was filming. and nor did she release the insects.
In one of several posts mocking her gender identity, on 24 October, when an image of a driver’s licence in the name of “Sophie”, born in 2007 was shown, Linehan said: “Well that couldn’t be Tarquin because he’s a bloke and that’s a girl’s name”.
On 24 October, Linehan wrote: “He’s also a scumbag who harasses women”. The same day, Linehan wrote: “If you encounter Tarquin in the wild, try to resist the urge to stick his cameras up his arse. He’s hoping to get you to do something he can report the police”.
On 25 October, Linehan repeated the point about the “Tarquin” name he had given Brooks, “Ha no it’s just a nickname because he’s so posh”. As a result of the social media posts, Brooks felt alarm or distress. Apart from an occasion when Brooks told Linehan that the posts were selective and to post the rest of the footage he had made, she did not engage directly with him online.
Graham Linehan was interviewed under caution on 5 February 2025. He provided a prepared statement in which he said, in summary, that he considered that Brooks – whom he referred to as “Tarquin” throughout the prepared statement – had harassed him, by approaching him and filming him at close quarters. He said he tried to ignore Brooks; Brooks provoked him and made a provocative statement; put the phone in his face; he grabbed the phone and threw it to the side; it was a reflex response. In relation to the online posts, Linehan did not accept it amounted to harassment; as a journalist – as he described himself – he believed exposing tactics of trans activities was in the public interest.
Harassment
For an offence of harassment, the prosecution must prove the defendant has pursued a course of conduct and that it amounted to harassment of another. Whilst not defined in statute, harassment may be described as conduct that is “oppressive and unacceptable”, beyond being merely “unattractive, annoying or irritating”: Majrowski v Guy’s and St Thomas’s NHS Trust [2006] UKHL 34, [2007] 1 A.C. 224 at [30].
For the avoidance of doubt, a series of publications about a person, even journalistic articles, is capable of amounting to harassment. See Thomas v Times Group Newspapers [2001] EWCA Civ 1233 at [15]: “The suggestion that journalistic articles were implicitly outside the ambit of the 1997 Act was, in my view, unarguable”.
Linehan takes issue with whether his conduct amounted to harassment. Harassment can occur if a defendant knew or ought to have known it would amount to harassment of another. For these purposes, Linehan“ought to have known” if a reasonable person in possession of the same information would think the course of conduct amounted to harassment of the other.
Criminal Damage
The prosecution must prove:
Linehan damaged Brooks’ mobile phone. Linehan does not accept that damage was caused by his actions.
Whether the damage was intended or Linehan was reckless as to whether the phone was destroyed
Whether Linehan had a lawful excuse. Linehan believes he was using reasonable force to prevent crime, namely harassment of himself and others.
The case for the defence
The criminal damage charge
There are two strands to this. The first is that the precise language Graham Linehan used to describe Brooks’ conduct at the point that Linehan took his phone, does not alter the fact that Brooks was harassing and provoking him.
That Graham Linehan made reference to not wanting to “surrender” to Brooks is no more consistent with surrendering in a fight than it is surrendering to the prospect of allowing Brooks to continue to harass and provoke him.
It is not for Graham Linehan to set out the parameters of Sophia Brooks’s rights. Whilst Sophia Brooks was entitled to confront him and to ask for an answer a second time, context is all. It was the manner of the confrontation, the persistence in the face of the clearest indications that Graham Linehan was not willing to talk to him, the following and the pushing his phone up to Graham Linehan’s face.
The taking and throwing of the phone was the response to Sophia Brooks’s behaviour, but even if the court is satisfied to the criminal standard that the provisions of s.3 of the Criminal Law Act 1967 do not apply, there remains the second strand.
This is the question of whether Graham Linehan’s action in swiping the phone to the ground actually caused the marks seen in the photographs shown in court.
Sophia Brooks told the court that the phone was perfectly intact before these events, but it is not safe to rely on his evidence. The court has the police “CRIS” document which sets out Brooks’s correspondence with the police, in which Brooks describes an appointment to take his phone to the Apple store. His words were “I’m having my mobile assessed for damage that Linehan may have caused”.
This phrase does not speak to someone who had checked his phone before being ejected from the Battle of Ideas, and where the complainant’s credibility is shaky. It is insufficient for the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to prove that Linehan threw or tossed the phone in a way that would be capable of causing such marks. The CPS has to prove that the marks were caused by that conduct, and it is not safe to infer that they were.
The second charge is one of harassment – referring to the tweets Linehan sent about Brooks.
What is harassment?
The conduct itself fails to cross the threshold from the “annoying, unattractive or irritating” to the “oppressive and unacceptable”. That terminology should be considered with care; the notion of what is unacceptable, or abusive is highly elastic, and generally fact-sensitive. They are certainly much wider concepts than the “oppressive”, and should not be treated as coextensive: words which are rude, or offensive, unwelcome, controversial or provocative, are seldom actually oppressive.
Even the defamatory is not automatically oppressive. If there are exceptions, words which will be oppressive in almost any situation, none of those exceptions can reasonably be said to be engaged here. Bearing in mind the description of the threshold by Lord Sumption in Hayes v Willoughby as “targeted oppression”, it is our submission that nothing short of the oppressive can attract criminal liability.
The CPS’s position is that Linehan’s posts were “targeted and calculated to produce alarm or distress”. This is a submission with little or no force when one bears in mind that, irrespective of the fact that Linehan’s evident knowledge of the many and various anonymous accounts used by Brooks, he at no point tagged Brooks into his posts, or sought to draw his attention to them. Indeed, the CPS relies on the fact that Brooks was not in dialogue with Linehan when the posts about him were published.
The complainant’s reported reaction to Linehan’s conduct as being “alarmed and distressed”, even if accepted as truthful, is insufficient. Toulson LJ, in R v Smith [2013] 1 WLR 1399 (at para 24) said:
“It does not follow that because references to harassing a person include alarming a person or causing a person distress (section 7(2)), any course of conduct which causes alarm or distress therefore amounts to harassment: Thomas v News Group Newspapers Ltd [2002] EMLR 78, para 29. So to reason would be illogical and would produce perverse results.”
Robbie Travers’ footage is of assistance. Travers clearly makes a connection between Sophia Brooks and the attack on the LGBA conference. The second is that, despite his asserted ‘fear of vigilante violence’ in response to Linehan’s use of the moniker ‘domestic terrorism’, Brooks’ response to the suggestion that he was involved in the attack is not an adamant denial, or any form of anxiety, but to ask if Travers is filming the conversation.
It would seem that, while the CPS seek to characterise Linehan as so immersed in the political battle that he has lost not only perspective but all rational thought, his suspicions were shared by both Robbie Travers and the live witness Julie Bindel who the court can treat as a witness who is truthful and reliable; a model of sanity and reasonableness.
The Complainant’s Credibility
There is nothing of any value in Brooks’ evidence beyond the precise parameters of that which is captured on film or audio. His account of all material events, his conduct, his reactions and motivations are wholly unreliable, and his evidence should not be taken as support for the prosecution’s case.
For instance:
(i) Brooks, a police cadet, was assisted by both a former police officer (Lynsay Watson) and a lawyer (Stephanie Hayden), both of whom are trans identified males involved in trans activism. He wishes the court to accept that his use of the words “alarmed and distressed”, recited each time he was asked how a post, or conduct in person, made him feel, is not in any way connected with the language of the statute and that it is a “coincidence” that he, spontaneously, used those terms to describe how he felt.
(ii) The timing of the allegation speaks to its bad faith and insincerity. Brooks says that he was aware of the posts from 11 October 2024, but not because he followed Graham Linehan’s account on X. It was his evidence that the posts were brought to his attention by “a friend” who wasn’t Lynsay Watson. Brooks’ complaint to the police was about the phone, initially described as an assault. He made no complaint of being alarmed or distressed by the social media posts until after Lynsay Watson had made his own complaint to the police specifically about those posts. That complaint was made in terms which made it clear that Watson and Brooks were in contact.
(iii) The absurdity of Brooks’ claims to be alarmed and distressed by Graham Linehan’s conduct, both online and in person: his readiness in confronting Graham Linehan, and his persistence in pursuing him does not speak to a person who is either alarmed or distressed. It is clear from both his words and demeanour that he was thoroughly enjoying himself. His explanation that he pursued Graham Linehan after being told, in no uncertain terms, to leave him alone because he hoped that Linehan would be shamed about what he described as “targeting a teenager” is also implausible. It is clear that his purpose was to harass and provoke.
(iv) Brooks’ stated reason for being ejected from the Battle of Ideas conference was that there were “malicious complaints” about him taking photographs of attendees at the ‘Gender Wars’ session: not one of the defence witnesses has a convincing reason to make the effort to come to this court to commit perjury. Each of them has an impeccable reputation.
Their support for women’s rights and protections has never involved or endorsed the kind of behaviour which the court has seen from Brooks. Any submission or insinuation that evidence from any one of them is unreliable because they do not perfectly replicate one another’s recollection can be dismissed out of hand. It is the experience of the courts that a number of truthful and reliable witnesses will recall a single event with a different emphasis, seeing some things and not others, recalling some things and not others. Indeed, the court is, in my submission, wise to be sceptical where a number of witnesses give evidence which amounts to perfect replication, since this is seldom a feature of memory and more often a feature of collaboration.
Conduct
Sophia Brooks’ conduct, online and in person, is not granted immunity from criticism by the fact that he was not in conversation with his critics. He cannot enjoy an asymmetric protection against criticism or scrutiny. He behaves in discreditable ways, publishing sinister and disturbing messages to women who don’t accept he is female, eg: “we know who you are and we’re cataloguing everything that you do” and quite knowingly using the sexist and demeaning phrase “don’t you worry your pretty little head” before going on to make what sounds very like a threat: “You will pay. I never lose. It’s something that Kellie-Jay Keen says. It’s not really true for her but it is true for me.” He then asserts that he has, by the adequacy of his deceit, protected himself from exposure by those he states he is cataloguing.
Brooks further engages, with all the signs of delight, in a conversation with Maria McLachlan about the fact that she suffered an assault at the hands of a man called Tara Wolf. Brooks accuses her of making false accusations about him, and then of both lying about and instigating the assault of which Tara Wolf was convicted in 2018, a case in which the court may recall Ms McLachlan was admonished by the judge for referring to Wolf in the masculine. In the same footage, Brooks repeatedly asks Ms McLachlan why she is trembling. Its possible Brooks did not properly appreciate how alarming or distressing it could be for Ms McLachlan to be filmed by two men who are taunting her about being assaulted. Or, more likely, Brooks’ conduct was an attempt to bully, victim-blame and intimidate and, in that sense, to be entirely consistent with what Graham Linehan describes as stereotypically abusive male behaviour towards women.
Some of the material posted by Brooks is no different from that of which he makes complaint about Graham Linehan. By way of example, Brooks complains of Linehan seeking to obtain personal information about him. This is clearly conduct he considers to be acceptable when he does it, as is apparent from the tweet in which he posts a photograph of a person leaving a building and seeks information which may help to identify them for committing the offence of taking a photo in a court house.
Another example is his complaint of fearing vigilante violence in response to Graham Linehan’s description of him as a ‘domestic terrorist’. Again, the court has seen multiple posts in which Brooks makes inflammatory accusations against those he regards as political rivals. He accuses another man, without any apparent evidence, of being a paedophile, of regularly harassing 16 year old girls and of stalking. He further refers to a gender critical feminist as a “weird nonce”, in other words, a paedophile.
Other material posted was explained in a most illuminating way by Brooks. His response to the feminist campaigner, Jean Hatchett, about wishing the soup thrown at Posie Parker (aka Kellie-Jay Keen) was acid might well have been explained as a sardonic remark, a joke in rather poor taste. That, however, was not Brooks’ evidence. Brooks disdainfully told the court that the acid comment was made because he had been called deranged and sociopathic. His explicit position was that those who call him deranged and sociopathic are entirely undeserving of empathy.
In short, if someone calls him deranged and sociopathic, they can make no complaint about him behaving in a way consistent with sociopathy. This should be given significant weight when you consider the CPS’s characterisation of Linehan’s posts as “vindictive”.
We have seen Brooks’ behaviour, harassing and intimidating attendees – overwhelmingly women – at the Battle of Ideas conference, where he started to get up and photograph people almost as soon as Fiona McAnena began to speak about the wider social need for single sex services, particularly with regard to the needs of biological females.
Submissions on Harassment
A conviction for harassment would require from the court a double standard which has no place in the criminal justice system. The judgment of Mr Justice Nicklin in the case of Hayden & Dickenson provided a compendious review of the authorities on harassment, its limits and the important principles to be born in mind when evaluating an application for a civil remedy. Those principles are no less applicable in the criminal courts, providing that the court recognises that what is to be proven is measured against a higher standard in a criminal court. At paragraph 73 of the judgment, he said:
“The court can reasonably expect a person who is the subject of unwanted communications to engage in a degree of self-help before seeking to obtain a harassment injunction from the court. The first step is self-resilience: the ability to ignore or shrug off unpleasant messages or comments, a quality that is perhaps all the more important if a person intends to engage in public debate.”
He went on to say:
“Even outside the arena of debate, most people, during their lives, will encounter occasional online comments that are critical and unpleasant, even offensive and upsetting. Sometimes that offence is intended, on other occasions the capacity for the remarks to hurt and upset is not fully appreciated by the critic. But everyone is expected to show a degree of tolerance and resilience in the face of this sort of occasional unpleasantness. These are part of the day-to-day irritations, annoyances and upset that are a fact of modern life.”
This marks the baseline of how people not engaged in political debate can be expected to protect themselves from the less pleasant aspects of the online world. Brooks’ approach has been the polar opposite of the expectations set out by Mr Justice Nicklin. Brooks went out, seeking to take offence. He was never alarmed or distressed by the posts, and his complaints are made in bad faith.
Judgment has been reserved until at least 25 November 2025 and is currently scheduled to be handed down on that date at Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London. There was no jury in this case – District Judge Briony Clarke has been hearing it alone. Thanks for reading this monster post!
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