The truth has caught up with Ryan Giggs and it is his time to “pay the price”, a court has heard – as a prosecutor’s questioning of the footballer was compared to “blood sport”.
Jurors are set to retire to consider their verdicts in the former Manchester United star’s trial on Tuesday morning after the prosecution and defence delivered their closing speeches.
Giggs is accused of using controlling and coercive behaviour against his ex-girlfriend Kate Greville, as well as assaulting her and sister Emma.
He denies the charges against him.
Read live updates from the trial as they happened
Addressing the jury on Monday, prosecutor Peter Wright QC said the case was about the “abuse of power of a man over another human being” and it was “a tale which is as old as the hills”.
He told the jury that when Giggs was “angered” he “could and would resort to aggression”.
Ryan Giggs assault trial: Sir Alex Ferguson tells court former player had ‘fantastic temperament’ and he never saw him lose temper
Ryan Giggs assault trial hears intimate love poem he wrote to ex-girlfriend Kate Greville
Ryan Giggs trial: Ex-Manchester United star breaks down in tears as he describes night in police cell as ‘worst experience of his life’
“His ultimate trump card was physical domination,” Mr Wright said.
The prosecutor said Giggs would “beat” and “physically abuse” Ms Greville and when “riled” he would send “hate-filled outbursts of bile” to “the very same woman moments earlier he had professed to love and care for”.
“The reality is the truth has caught up with him and now it’s time… it’s his time to pay the price,” Mr Wright said.
Giggs’s ex accused of telling ‘so many lies’
Delivering the defence’s closing speech, Giggs’ barrister Chris Daw QC said the prosecutor’s questioning of Giggs during the trial was almost “a form of blood sport”.
He described Mr Wright as “one of the leading prosecution barristers of the last 40 years” and suggested Giggs was “like a rabbit in the headlights” who was embarrassed to admit he did not understand some of the questions.
Mr Daw said it was “no more an equal match up than putting Mr Wright in goal against Mr Giggs at his footballing peak”.
The defence barrister said his client was not on trial for being an “adulterer”, a “liar, a “cheat” or a “no good heartbreaker”, referring to an Aretha Franklin lyric.
He accused Kate Greville of telling “so many lies” including that she “had cancer, in effect”.
The court has previously heard Ms Greville lied to Giggs that a smear test had shown “cancerous cells” and she was in fact going to an appointment to get her coil removed.
“It’s a pretty manipulative lie to tell,” Mr Daw added.
‘Put aside any feelings of sympathy’
The defence barrister asked the jury to consider if Ms Greville is someone “who’s capable of manipulation” and someone “who’s capable of twisting reality to her own ends”.
Earlier, Judge Hillary Manley began her summing up in the case and said both Giggs and Ms Greville were “distressed” at points of their evidence during the trial.
She told the jury: “Put aside any feelings of sympathy for one person or another, or both.
“You do not try a case on sympathy.”
Jurors asked to re-watch CCTV footage from Giggs’s property on the night of the alleged assaults, with recordings of 999 calls made by Ms Greville’s sister played in sync with the video.
The court also heard that 19,671 messages had been exchanged between Giggs and Ms Greville, enough to fill 56 lever arch files.
The trial at Manchester Crown Court was adjourned until Tuesday morning when the judge will finish her summing up before the jury retires to consider its verdicts.
