Comedian Lucy Beaumont, who has said she was a whistleblower in the David Walliams investigation, has condemned the "insanity" of UK consent laws that legally allow adults of any age to have sex with 16 and 17-year-olds.
Walliams, a best-selling author and former Britain's Got Talent judge, 55, was named as part of an investigation by The Guardian and ITV News on Tuesday, after he tried to obtain an injunction to prevent the reporting of allegations against him. One woman described her alleged encounter with Walliams, when she was 15, as a "sexual assault", while multiple women accused him of "grooming" them when they were teenagers. Walliams denies any wrongdoing.
Support for Close The Consent Gap
Beaumont, 43, said on Tuesday that she had raised concerns about Walliams after being told he was hosting teenage girls in his dressing room while working on a TV show, adding she had been "worried" about whether he had behaved inappropriately. She has now thrown her support behind the Close The Consent Gap Campaign, which aims to change the law that "legally allows adults to have sex with children".
In a post on Instagram, Beaumont urged others to follow @closetheconsentgap and wrote: "If you have a 12-year-old daughter, in four years a man in his 60s can legally have sex with her. It's hard for me to write this, and I'm sure, for the majority of us, it's hard for us to read it. But we have to. He is not a criminal. We can't prosecute him. But the insanity of it, the law agrees with us; she's still thought of as a child. He can't legally buy her a drink, and he can't have a nude image of her. But he can sleep with her. And f*** her life up."
Commenting on the post, comedian and TV presenter Alan Carr shared a series of emojis showing hands clapping. TV personality Vicky Pattison wrote: "Lucy, from the bottom of my heart… thank you. You're a hero."
Whistleblower account
Beaumont discussed her response to the allegations involving Walliams while appearing on The Cathy Newman Show on Sky News on Tuesday, saying she "wants to protect young women" in the TV industry. She said: "I don't know Walliams, I haven't worked with him, but, bizarrely, it's been a really strange day for me because, about three years ago, a young person – and it was their first job on TV – worked on a show he was on and the next show that they worked on was with me. They took me aside and said, 'I need to tell somebody something' and confided in me. Some of (Walliams's) conduct that they were really worried about."
Beaumont said the young person told her they had to "take young girls" who were "definitely" over 16 to Walliams's dressing room, adding: "He felt they were vulnerable." She continued: "At the time, he didn't think there was a process, a way to let people know within the TV company what was happening and how he felt and I was really worried."
The comedian said she "did as much as I could do privately", adding: "Whenever I've heard a rumour about anyone, I've done everything I can." However, she added there is "only so much you can do". She said: "I'm not the police. Nothing seems to be illegal. But I was really worried, and I was one of the whistleblowers. I was one of the people to let The Guardian know."
Context and response
Beaumont said she had never worked with Walliams or witnessed any inappropriate behaviour from him, but was "worried that these girls were young". She said she did not know if the allegations were true but had wanted to assist. Beaumont has been a vocal critic of misogyny, sexism, and inappropriate male behaviour on the UK comedy circuit and previously discussed "predatory" male behaviour in her industry and how people did not believe the women who were speaking up.
In a letter understood to have been sent several months ago by Walliams to journalists working on the ITV News and Guardian investigations, the television personality wrote: "Looking back, I realise that at times I behaved thoughtlessly towards other people I had casual sexual relationships with. I realise I did not always take people's feelings properly into account. That is something I regret. And whilst a power imbalance is inevitable when one party is famous, abusing that power is something else entirely and it is something that I never did." He added: "I am not a sexual predator. I have not broken the law, but I am devastated that some of the women I met 10 to 20 years ago have now expressed hurt or anger towards me."
