LONDON (AP) — British children’s author and comedian David Walliams used his fame to groom girls and young women for sex, two British news outlets reported on Tuesday.
ITV News and the Guardian newspaper said their joint investigation featured interviews with multiple women who gave first-hand accounts of Walliams' conduct. One woman alleged he sexually assaulted her at his house when she was 15, while others accused him of grooming them when they were teens.
Walliams, 55, denied the allegations. He had sought a court injunction to bar ITV News and the Guardian from identifying him in their reporting. His lawyers claimed that publication of sexual misconduct allegations would lead him to take his own life.
A judge rejected his injunction request last week, but protected his identity until late Monday.
“I am not a sexual predator,” Walliams said, according to ITV. “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.”
“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.
Walliams’ lawyer, Sara Mansoori, earlier told the High Court that he had made a suicide attempt when he received letters from ITN and Guardian News and Media seeking his response to the allegations. He later made another attempt, she said, and he was recently admitted to the hospital for psychiatric care.
The case drew widespread attention in Britain because it highlighted questions over public figures’ right to privacy and what media can report on the basis of public interest.
Gavin Millar, representing the media companies, has said that the allegations were gathered after “a wide-ranging and rigorous investigation” and that there was a strong public interest in publishing them.
He told the court that the investigation involved speaking to more than 100 people, and alleged that over a period of years Walliams "used his status and influence as a well-known public figure to establish contact with young women, some considerably younger than him, and that he engaged or sought to engage in seriously inappropriate conduct,” according to a summary of the court judgment.
Some of the alleged conduct could amount to criminal offenses if proven, it said.
Walliams was dropped last year by publisher HarperCollins after allegations were made of inappropriate behavior. Few details were published at the time, but the Guardian reported Tuesday that there were concerns about his behavior for years, including an allegation that he had an inappropriate sexual relationship with a junior female employee.
Walliams is best known for comedy sketches on “Little Britain," a hugely popular British TV show in the 2000s, but he's also a celebrated children's book author with some 40 published titles that sold more than 60 million copies worldwide, according to his website.
Several of them, including “Gangsta Granny,” have been adapted into BBC comedy dramas and stage productions.
He was also a judge for years on “Britain’s Got Talent," though in 2022 he stepped down after apologizing for making “disrespectful comments” about auditioning contestants.
The BBC said Tuesday it was removing some programmes, including “Little Britain,” while it carried out a review of “all material featuring and written by David Walliams on our platforms."
The literary agency Independent Talent Group also said it was dropping Walliams following the new allegations.
In dismissing the injunction bid by Walliams, Justice Matthew Nicklin said such a legal measure would mean “an exceptionally serious interference” with the rights of the media companies.
He noted that Walliams had a “serious and longstanding psychiatric vulnerability” which must be taken seriously, and said a decision allowing the allegations to be published will substantially increase his risk of suicide. However, he added that the evidence did not “establish that suicide is inevitable.”
FILE - The Royal Courts of Justice are seen in London, Oct. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant, File)
FILE - David Walliams poses for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film "The Choral " during the London film festival in London, on Oct. 12, 2025. (Photo by Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks are falling Tuesday after a report showed inflation was worse across the country last month than economists expected.
The S&P 500 fell 0.7% and gave back some of its big rally from the day before. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 333 points, or 0.6%, as of 10:45 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.8% lower.
Pressure from the bond market undercut stocks following the discouraging report on inflation. People had to pay prices for groceries, electricity and other costs of living that were even higher last month than economists expected. That could push the Federal Reserve to hike its main interest rate at its next meeting in December and beyond.
Higher interest rates can help rein in inflation, but they do so by making it more expensive for everyone to borrow money and by slowing the overall economy. Higher rates also make investors less willing to pay high prices for stocks and other investments.
One Fed official even hinted the central bank may increase the federal funds rate by double the typical amount next month because of how high inflation has remained for years.
Speaking in London before the inflation report was released, Fed Gov. Christopher Waller said “a stronger policy move may be needed” if the report showed an important underlying measure of inflation rose by 0.3% from September.
In that case, he said the Fed should consider hiking the federal funds rate by half a percentage point rather than the typical quarter point. Moving by only the usual amount could “put our credibility at risk, a risk I am not eager to take.”
Shortly afterward, Tuesday’s inflation report showed that the underlying measure of inflation Waller was worried about was exactly 0.3%, the threshold he had set. It's the Fed's job to keep inflation under control, along with keeping the job market strong.
That sent yields jumping in the bond market as traders upped their forecasts for coming hikes to rates by the Fed.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury jumped to 4.99% from 4.88% late Monday. It's a notable move for the bond market, and the yield helps set where rates are for mortgages and other loans going to U.S. households and businesses.
The 10-year Treasury yield had been dropping since early October, when it topped 5.30% as worries spiked about high inflation, higher interest rates, the U.S. government’s big debt and other concerns.
Tuesday’s jump in yields came even though oil prices fell again. The price for a barrel of Brent crude oil sank 2.4% to $90.31. President Donald Trump said late Monday that the war in Iran, which sent oil prices much higher, “militarily is effectively over.”
Brent’s price has been falling from more than $112 at the start of the month amid uncertainty about what will happen with the war with Iran.
Jumps in Treasury yields push downward on prices for all kinds of stocks, and they can particularly hurt companies in the real-estate business.
Higher mortgage rates can keep potential customers away from homebuilders, for example, and Lennar fell 5% for one of the sharper losses in the S&P 500.
Rival homebuilders also fell, including drops of 4.3% for D.R. Horton and 4.3% for PulteGroup. Builders FirstSource, which sells crown mouldings, cabinets and other products to homebuilders, sank 5.3%.
The single heaviest weight on the S&P 500 was Nvidia, which fell 5.3%. It's been under pressure since its board announced an investigation into its CEO, Jensen Huang, who admitted to a relationship with a woman who, according to The New York Times, U.S. intelligence determined was gathering information for China.
It's also been swinging amid broader worries that have knocked the artificial-intelligence industry around recently. Democratic victories in statehouses across the country last week raised concerns about possible restrictions on construction of AI data centers. That built on top of already longstanding worries that AI stock prices had shot too high and were in a bubble.
Outside of Nvidia, other stocks in the AI industry were mixed. GE Vernova, which is helping to power AI data centers, dropped 7.2%. Micron Technology, which sells memory for computers, fell 2.3% after flipping between gains and losses earlier in the morning.
But Advanced Micro Devices climbed 2.6%. CoreWeave, a company that rents out access to AI chips to customers over the cloud, also held up better. It added 0.8%.
The recent shakiness for AI-related stocks had raised questions about whether Anthropic, the company behind the Claude chatbot, may delay its initial public offering of stock.
But Anthropic said in a filing with U.S. regulators on Tuesday that it's looking to sell its stock at a price valuing the company at roughly $1.3 trillion. That would make it one of the most valuable companies on Wall Street, worth more than Walmart, JPMorgan Chase, ExxonMobil or Coca-Cola.
In stock markets abroad, indexes rose across much of Europe and Asia.
South Korea's Kospi jumped 4.4% for one of the world's biggest gains on strength for its two tech giants that have benefited from the AI boom, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix.
AP Writers Elaine Lai and Matt Ott contributed to this report.
Trader Robert Greason works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Monday, Nov. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
Specialist Dilip Patel works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Monday, Nov. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
Options trader Frank Maiolo works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Monday, Nov. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
Screens display the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won and the Korea Securities Dealers Automated Quotations (KOSDAQ) at a dealing room of Hana Bank in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
Screens display the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), the foreign exchange rates and the Korea Securities Dealers Automated Quotations (KOSDAQ) at a dealing room of Hana Bank in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
A dealer walks near the screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) at a dealing room of Hana Bank in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
A dealer walks near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) at a dealing room of Hana Bank in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
A dealer talks on a phone near the screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) at a dealing room of Hana Bank in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
