Ryan Giggs trial: Ex-girlfriend told friend she 'wasn't going to walk away with nothing'

Ryan Giggs’ ex-girlfriend today batted-off suggestions she was a ‘gold digger’ from the footballer’s legal team after it was revealed she told a friend she was ‘not going to walk away’ from their ‘violent’ relationship ‘with nothing’.

Kate Greville today told jurors in the footballer’s domestic assault trial that she was initially attracted to the former Manchester United star ‘not because of his money and not because he was a footballer’ but because he was ‘very inspiring’.

In cross examination by the former Manchester United star’s lawyer, Chris Daw QC, Kate Greville was asked: ‘Did you tell your friend you weren’t going to walk away from Mr Giggs with nothing?’

Ms Greville said: ‘Yes.’ However the PR executive said she was not after compensation from the former Wales midfielder. Asked if she was seeking damages from the 48-year-old, she said: ‘Absolutely not.’ 

Asked about their relationship, Ms Greville, 36, who was married when she had initially began an affair with also married Giggs, told the court that if anything she was put off by the fact that he was a footballer.

The barrister asked her: ‘Did Ryan’s public profile and wealth have anything to do with your interest in him?

Ms Greville said: ‘He was very inspiring, I looked up to him in terms of a business sense, who had worked hard…’ 

‘He was more attractive because he was successful and had done well for himself, not because of his money and not because he was a footballer, if anything that put me off, him being a footballer.’

She admitted to having sex with the former Manchester United star two months before leaving her husband, who she alleged in court was ‘controlling’.

And said initially their relationship had been ‘amazing’, before deteriorating and becoming ‘relentlessly awful’ while they lived together during the Covid pandemic.

Today she told jurors how the former football star preyed on her ‘vulnerability’ and damaged relations with her friends and family. She also told a court she became ‘a slave to his every need and every demand’.

Ms Greville said Giggs would sometimes show her affection but was ‘aggressive’ a lot of the time and would sometimes use violence against her.

‘He damaged relationships with my friends and isolated me from certain people. He had a negative impact on relations with my family. ‘ 

Giving evidence behind a screen, Ms Greville, who today told the court she is now the mother of 12-week birthday with her new partner, told Manchester Crown Court she became ‘a slave to his every need and every demand’.

She told the court that when Giggs told her to do something she would do it. She said: ‘He made me feel like I had to do what he said otherwise there were consequences.’ 

Asked about the violent incidents, she said: ‘It wasn’t consistent violence, he wasn’t regularly violent but there were times in our relationship when he was violent.’

She was asked if she had looked up the term coercive control and said: ‘I’m really into psychology when Ryan was making me feel like I was going crazy, paranoid, I googled how I was feeling. The thing that came up was ‘narcissistic personality disorder’ and what I was experiencing was exactly the same as that. ‘

Asked if she had read any media reports about the start of the trial, she replied: ‘I’ve got a 12-week-old baby, I’ve not got time to read things.’

It comes as jurors yesterday heard evidence from Ms Greville, who said Giggs had told her that she ‘did not deserve to be a parent’ during a blazing row between the pair.

She also told the court how the ex-Manchester united star ‘deliberately headbutted’ her during a row at his £1.7million mansion in Worsley in November 2020.

Ms Greville, 36, yesterday broke down in tears as she said of the former Wales manager: ‘He came at me from nowhere and headbutted me in my face. 

‘I fell backwards, my lip instantly swelled. I put my hands over my mouth and I could taste the blood.’

Giggs is in on trial accused of controlling and coercive behaviour against his ex-girlfriend between August 2017 and November 2020.

He is also charged with assaulting Ms Greville and her sister Emma. He denies all charges against him and is on trial at Manchester Crown Court.

On Day 2 of evidence at Ryan Giggs’ trial, the court heard evidence from his former girlfriend Ms Greville, who said:

• She thought of Giggs as ‘a best friend, a soul mate’ who saved her from her marriage. Their affair began after her mother asked her to get a shirt signed;
• But the PR executive said she saw early ‘red flags’, including harassing her via text if she failed to reply within ten minutes. She claimed he also became angry if she asked if he was seeing other women;
• In her police interview in 2020 she has told how the former football star ‘dragged’ her to the floor naked  in Abu Dhabi after she accused him of texting another woman;
• She also claimed that there was an incident in London when she was also thrown out of a hotel room naked;
• Ms Greville also said Giggs walked out on her in a Dubai restaurant after she told him to come off his phone;
• The next day she said she received an email from an anonymous man who sent her a naked picture of Mr Giggs he had found on his wife’s mobile;
• On one occasion she was messaged by another woman saying she was in a relationship with Giggs; 
• Ms Greville said Giggs ‘always wanted sex’ and would bombard her with lewd messages. She said: ‘If I didn’t reply to him, I’d get a lot of abusive messages.

Yesterday the court was played Ms Greville’s 105 minute interview with detectives in November 2020 following the row, in which Giggs is also accused of having assaulted Ms Greville’s sister, Emma.

The court also heard how Giggs had engaged in ‘full-on’ affairs with eight women during ‘toxic’ six-year on-off relationship with Ms Greville.

The PR executive, who said the pair’s early relationship was like ‘like a love story from the movies’, told jurors how she attempted to leave the former Manchester United and Wales star over his alleged flings and ‘controlling’ behaviour.

However Giggs would ‘bombard’ her with up to 50 messages an hour and threatened to ruin her career.

In one instance when she stopped answering him, he flew out to where she was living in Dubai and said to her ‘let’s start a family, you are the only person I want to be with’.

Ms Greville went on: ‘Then he went back home and I found out he was dating another girl. I was absolutely devastated.’

She claims he denied it, saying the woman had a boyfriend and urged her to move back to Manchester with him and have a baby.

The court heard how, in a separate incident, Giggs twice threw his then-girlfriend out of a hotel room while she was naked and on one occasion threw a laptop at her head.  

Ms Greville also claimed the former Wales winger ‘randomly’ sent a naked photo of himself to her, that she feared he could post ‘something of a really private nature’ on a work WhatsApp group and that he would call her by the name of his ex-wife, Stacey, as his ‘ultimate insult’.

She also told jurors Giggs would treat her ‘like his housemaid or his mum’, telling her she was stacking the dishwasher the wrong way, making the beds incorrectly, or complaining ‘if his tea was not ready on time’.

Yesterday, Ms Greville told Manchester Crown Court how Giggs ‘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.’

After police were called, she told the court how Giggs turned to her and said: ‘You need to think about this Kate, this could ruin me and it could ruin you.’

Ms Greville also told jurors how Giggs had ‘meant’ to harm her and that the alleged attack was different to all the other times she said he had hurt her.

Recalling the moment she said: ‘He said that the police had been called, that they were on their way and he was going to tell them that I attacked him and that I’m a psycho.

‘He was angry but there was cockiness to it. He was trying to bait me. We moved then to the kitchen. I reached out to try and get my phone.

‘I told him ‘I’m glad the police are coming because you attacked me and I’ll tell them exactly what happened’

‘And that was when he came forward to me and head butted me in the face. He came at me from nowhere, grabbed me by the shoulders and head butted my face.

‘He didn’t say sorry, he said nothing to me. I said: ‘I can’t believe you’ve just done that.’ I was in shock, I fell backwards, and I could feel my lip swell immediately. 

‘I put my hand over my mouth and could taste the blood. All the other times he hurt me, this was different, he meant to hurt me. He looked at me straight in the eyes and head butted me straight in the face.

‘He said ‘You need to think about this Kate, this could ruin me and it could ruin you.

‘He was saying ‘think about my job, my career, my kids’ and I said ‘you shouldn’t have done it then.’

Giggs was having ‘full-on’ affairs with eight other women during his ‘toxic’ six-year on-off relationship with Kate Greville, the court heard yesterday.

The PR executive, 36, made the discovery after accessing the football star’s iPad having ‘made it my mission to find out the truth’ about his other lovers, she told police.

She said how, during what she called a ‘cycle of abuse’, Giggs ‘dragged’ her out of the bedroom of a five-star hotel – leaving her naked in the corridor – after she accused him of ‘manically’ flirting with other women during a night out.

He then threw a bag containing her laptop at her head, giving her a ‘massive lump’, Manchester Crown Court heard.

When she attempted to leave him over his alleged flings and ‘controlling’ behaviour, Giggs would ‘bombard’ her with up to 50 messages an hour and threatened to ruin her career, she claimed.

Eventually she got into his iPad as she ‘needed to know the truth’ – and the ‘reality’ of his cheating was ‘way worse than I could imagine’, she said.

It comes as the coercion and assault trial yesterday heard how Giggs had ‘full-on relationships’ with eight women during his time together Ms Greville who discovered he had texted a friend to brag: ‘Just need the bars to open so I can pull some cl**ge’ .

Ms Greville told police in a video shown to the jury at Minshull Street Court that she made the discovery about his cheating while looking at his iPad shortly before she decided to leave him.

While scrolling through Giggs’ Apple tablet, she also said she saw messages to his friends calling her a ‘sl*g’ and ‘silly cow’. Jurors also heard Ms Greville claimed that Mr Giggs had said in a message: ‘Just need the bars to open so I can pull some cl**ge’.

She was interviewed by detectives weeks after she claimed Giggs, 48, headbutted her at his mansion Greater Manchester. Giggs constantly denied he was cheating on her, she said, but she ‘needed to know the truth’ as she checked on his device.

She said: ‘The reality of what I had found on that iPad was way worse than I could imagine. Eight women he was having affairs with while he was with me. Full-on relationships.’

Ms Greville then said she decided to leave him while he was away managing Wales – and would move into a new flat.

She said: ‘It was all there in black and white. I knew if I even brought it up he would deny it. I knew he was going away to manage Wales, about four weeks after I found out, so I just put a plan in place to leave.

‘I sorted out a new flat, I wrote him a letter which I never got the chance to send. I knew if I confronted him about anything, it would just kick off. I just made a plan to leave, and I kept it in for three weeks, which sent me under. I just needed to take a bit of control.’

But despite her claims she was seeing eight other women, Ms Greville told the court in evidence from behind a screen that Ryan Giggs would regularly accuse her of cheating and of ‘being with other men’. 

Giggs, who was sat yards away in the dock, even sent her a message saying: ‘Are you going to be a good girl?’ She told the jury: ‘If I didn’t do what he said, or wasn’t a good girl as he liked to call it… and didn’t give him hassle as he called it, then he would get angry and not be very nice to me.’

Yesterday, the court was shown her interview with police in 2020 where she had broken down as she described how Ryan Giggs twice ‘dragged’ her out of a hotel room and dumped her in the corridor naked in rows over him texting and flirting with women – including one occasion where he allegedly kicked her in the back and threw a laptop at her head.

Kate Greville told the court that in 2019 she discovered Giggs was in a relationship with his current girlfriend Zara Charles – and blocked him on social media.

After Giggs sent Ms Greville messages demanding she unblock him, she said she was ‘scared’ after he ‘threatened’ to post messages about her to a work WhatsApp group. ‘He could have sent anything,’ she told the court. He wasn’t very rational.’

She said she was concerned Giggs could post ‘something of a really private nature, of a personal nature… to embarrass and humilate me’.

Ms Greville said she feared Giggs would ‘try and ruin her career’.

She said Giggs threatened to ask a work WhatsApp group if she was dating a man called Rob.

Ms Greville said she felt ‘mortified’.  

Yesterday, Mr Greville alleged that in a London hotel room Giggs once ‘kicked me in the back so hard that I flew off the bed and landed on the floor’. She then claims he ‘dragged’ her while naked into the suite area of the room.

‘He got my bag with my laptop and threw it at my head’, she told detectives, alleging that Giggs then locked her out of the hotel room naked, before letting her back in about 10 minutes later before having sex. 

Ms Greville told police it happened when she accused Giggs of flirting with other women in her presence. She said: ‘I don’t know whether he did it to make me jealous. He would completely ignore me and he would speak to everybody else. He would also flirt with my friends’.

She claimed he told her that he would ask whether it ‘bothered’ her when she flirted with them. Later she challenged him and claimed that Giggs told her it was ‘over’ and that she should apologise.

‘I ended up saying sorry because he made me feel that bad,’ she said.

After challenging him about the alleged back throwing, she claimed Giggs replied: ‘He was like ‘yeah, because you accused me of flirting’.

‘He didn’t say you deserve it, but you made me do it. And then I felt like it was my fault’.

Recalling a row when they were staying in an Abu Dhabi hotel, she said: ‘I asked him ‘are you messaging a girl?’ She said Giggs threw her out the room while she was naked and said: ‘He flipped, went right up to my face and said ‘how f***ing dare you, it’s my daughter. We’re done, we’re over’.’

‘He grabbed me by my wrist, so hard, literally dragged me to the lounge and dragged me off the floor. He threw all of my stuff, all of my make-up in the corridor and shut the door and wouldn’t let me in’, she said. 

The police interview began with Ms Greville describing how she had met Giggs in 2013 when she was working for a PR firm, in which Giggs was one of their clients.

They had an affair while she was married and Giggs was still wed to wife Stacey. Their relationship began after her mother asked her to get a shirt signed, she said.

Ms Greville told police she left her husband after falling in love with her ‘soulmate’ and ‘best friend’ Giggs before ‘red flags’ emerged and he began calling her a ‘whore’ and accused her of ‘f***ing someone else’ if she didn’t see him. 

She said Giggs made her feel ‘paranoid’ and ‘like a psycho’ when she confronted him over repeated affairs, claiming at one point he had two other girlfriends he was seeing behind her back. 

On one occasion she confronted him and he called her ‘weak’ for believing it. And as the relationship went on she alleged he bombarded her with sexual messages and photos and then threatened to publicly share explicit videos of them together.

She said: ‘He’d come to my house in the morning, we’d have sex, it felt like he was just using me for sex. He wouldn’t leave me alone, there was never a time when he didn’t want to have sex. He’d come round to mine to have sex, then flew to Barcelona with a different girl.

‘One minute he would be like, ‘you’re abusive, this is never going to work’, and then he’d be sending me naughty pictures.

‘If I didn’t reply to him, I’d get a lot of abusive messages. He sent me an email once with blackmail [as the subject line] and it was a video of what we’d done. He’d say: ‘I’m going to send these messages to people if you don’t reply’.’

Giggs also ‘did this gaslighting thing’ that was ‘very subtle’ and ‘constantly criticised’ her, including how she loaded the dishwasher and how she made the bed, she told police, adding: ‘It was like I was a housemaid, I was his staff member’.

On another occasion she said Giggs had walked out on her in a Dubai restaurant after she told him to come off his phone. She said: ‘I was really upset, I don’t understand what’s 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 a naked picture of Mr Giggs he had found on his wife’s phone.

Ms Greville 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.

‘It was the start of a pattern, he would do something bad and I’d accuse him he would get really aggressive and nasty with me. He then started to be really nice with me again and the nice Ryan I had before would come back. It created this push pull, he would do something bad but he would be really nice to me but it wouldn’t last long and he would go back to himself when that little bit of guilt went away.’

Ms Greville said she was also messaged by another woman saying she was in a relationship with Giggs.

She said: ‘At the time I had been naive… I still felt he was my world and we had a future and wanted to have a family… When I realised that it was like a rug had been pulled underneath my feet and I didn’t want to carry on anymore.

‘I never thought he would because of what I had gone through. I was just naive and gullible I guess….. I got the email and remember thinking he was my best friend and soulmate and the realisation he wasn’t, I really struggled, it was really hard.

‘But he wouldn’t leave me alone and I worked for him. I would give him some s*** on messaging. It was me getting things off my chance. He would say ‘I’m your boss, you can’t talk to me like this’ and said I was abusive. And then he would be sending me naughty pictures because I said ‘That’s it, I don’t want anymore to do with you’.’

The alleged victim said this went on for four months but they would still go for dinner and would have sex. 

She said Mr Giggs would threaten her with her job and sent her an email headlined ‘Blackmail’ with a video ‘we had done’.

She said: ‘(Giggs) said ‘I’m going to send these messages and people will know what you’ve been doing.’

When asked if she knew what the video was of, Ms Greville said: ‘I deleted it straight away, it could have been anything but it could have been a sexual video.

‘It made me unblock him because I was scared. He would message my friends, he wanted to have sex all the time. He wouldn’t pressurise me, no he would pressurise me for sex but he didn’t force himself on me, he was using sex to get to me.

‘He thought I was seeing some guy and he bombarded me. He said ‘That’s it, you’re ruined, you’re finished’…… It was a cycle of abuse and silence or sexual images over these four months. He would make me feel he was threatening my job which was so important and I was worried he would ruin my career.’

Kate said she had worked for a PR firm used by one of Giggs’ business and they first met in 2013, and said: ‘Over a course of a year, two years, I started to notice he had a definite interest in me’. In 2016 they had an affair and she left her husband after two months, claiming the ex-footballer ‘saved her’ and their relationship was ‘more than a sexual thing’.

‘He would say I was his soulmate. We would talk for hours. He helped me get out of that situation’, she said, but then said ‘red flags’ emerged when she failed to respond to messages or didn’t see him, and told a police officer that he would claim she was ‘f****** someone else’ and call her a ‘whore’.

They then split up when the affair emerged in the media in May 2016 and Giggs hadn’t left his wife Stacey. She then moved to Abu Dhabi but Giggs ‘kept pursuing and messaging me’, she said, claiming that her lover’s wife and daughter sent her ‘nasty messages’.

She tells the officer she then discovered Giggs had not left his family home so she decided she was ‘done’ and blocked Giggs ‘on everything’. But after he messaged her up to 30 times a day she claimed that he told her she was ‘the love my life’ only to discover he was seeing another woman. ‘I was absolutely devastated’, Ms Greville said.

She told police that in 2017 they met at a hotel but Giggs ‘flipped’ when she said he was a cheat. Giggs allegedly told her: ‘You made me do this… I don’t want to be with you anymore’ – and dumped her naked in the corridor with her belongings. She was ‘dragged’ there by the wrist, she told detectives. 

Giggs stood down in June as manager of the Wales national team following his arrest. 

The court heard that Ms Greville was employed by PR firm Tangerine for part of the alleged period of controlling behaviour and also by Giggs’ own company, GG Hospitality.

Giggs’ legal counsel, Chris Daw QC, said his client encouraged her career ambitions and went on to introduce most of her clients when she set up her business herself and earned a six-figure salary.

He said Ms Greville was ‘always completely financially independent’ and was free to travel and see her friends.

Giggs stood down in June as manager of the Wales national team following a period of leave since November 2020.

During his time at Old Trafford, Manchester United won 13 Premier League titles, two Champions League trophies, four FA Cups and three League Cups.

He won 64 caps for Wales and is co-owner of League Two side Salford City.

Giggs met Ms Greville in 2013 after she helped promote his Hotel Football venue, launched with ex-United teammate Gary Neville.

He divorced his wife Stacey in December 2017.  Giggs found love again with lingerie model, Zara Charles, 33, who has ‘supported’ him through the charges.