The former fiance of the late TV star Caroline Flack accused Mail Online columnist and GB News presenter Dan Wootton of being a sex offender and a murderer during a campaign of harassment, a court has heard.
A judge heard how Andrew Brady (pictured) compared Wootton, who is a former executive editor of The Sun, to convicted sex offender Harvey Weinstein during an online campaign lasting more than two months.
Brady, a former Apprentice and Celebrity Big Brother contestant, also posted an explicit picture of himself and invited the journalist to engage in sexual activity, the court heard.
On Tuesday, Brady, 31, pleaded guilty to one count of harassment at Sheffield Crown Court and was told he will be sentenced on Friday for the offence, which carries a maximum prison term of six months.
Related
The defendant, who was remanded in custody, was due to go trial last year but the proceedings had to be halted over legal problems.
The court heard on Monday how Brady had agreed to plead guilty to a less serious charge.
Laura Marshall, prosecuting, told the court that Wootton had been consulted about this and she said: “He simply wants the course of conduct to end.”
Content from our partners
Judge Jeremy Richardson QC told Brady: “I am pleased that this case has, at last, been resolved. You will be sentenced on Friday.
“As I have made clear already, the desire of everybody in this case, including myself, is for you to stop doing what you did. You must move on with your life, it is to be hoped, to sunnier uplands.”
The case was not opened and details of the offences were not outlined in court.
According to the charge read out by the clerk, Brady’s harassment of Wootton took place between 13 February and 28 April last year and included using Whatsapp, Snapchat, Twitter, Instagram, online blogs and Youtube to cause the journalist “alarm and distress”.
The charge revealed Brady had harassed Wootton by using social media to accuse him of “being a sex offender and murderer”, to compare him with Weinstein, to ask for their disagreements to be “settled by violence” and to repeatedly state his intention to end Wootton’s career and ensure he would be jailed.
Brady also invited his social media followers “to assist you in your crusade,” the charge stated.
He posted on Instagram: “I feel like getting rid of him once and for all today” and left Wootton Whatsapp voicemails threatening “to deal with” him when the police were not around and saying he would “go away for a very long time”.
Finally, Brady used Snapchat to post an explicit picture of himself and invite Wootton to engage in sexual activity.
The maximum sentence for this offence of harassment is six months in prison, the court heard.
Brady, who was engaged briefly to Flack in 2018, was remanded in custody in mid-December after a judge expressed concerns about his behaviour towards camera crews and photographers outside court and other actions inside the courtroom.
An inquest found in 2020 that Love Island presenter Flack had been “hounded” by the press in the weeks before she killed herself.
Picture: PA Wire/Ian West
Email pged@pressgazette.co.uk to point out mistakes, provide story tips or send in a letter for publication on our "Letters Page" blog
