I was a slave to Giggs’
She claims affair was a ‘fairytale’ that became ‘relentlessly awful’ and breaks down as she denies rough sex was behind wrist injury in Dubai
Ryan Giggs’s relationship with his ex-girlfriend began as a ‘fairytale’, but she ended up being ‘a slave’ to his ‘every need and every demand’, a court heard yesterday.
Kate Greville, 38, described the former Manchester United footballer and Wales manager ‘lovebombing’ her when their affair started.
She said she saw him as her ‘knight in shining armour’ who would rescue her from an unhappy marriage.
But as time went on, Miss Greville told Giggs’s trial, he became ‘two different people’, and by their final months together he was ‘pretty much relentlessly awful’.
Describing his alleged controlling and coercive behaviour during the last three years of their ‘toxic’ on-off relationship before she claims he headbutted her in the face, the PR executive broke down in the witness box, denying her account was ‘a pack of lies’.
She rejected claims by his barrister that an injury to her wrist allegedly caused by Giggs dragging her naked out of their Dubai hotel suite following a bust-up was in fact caused by their regular ‘rough sex’ sessions. Under cross-examination, Miss
‘It’s not a pack of lies’
Greville admitted sending Giggs a message from the beach days later showing off her tan, adding: ‘My sex bruise is coming out nicely too!!’
But she insisted the comment was her way of ‘making light’ of the fact he had attacked her.
asked about the incident while they were on holiday in September 2017, Miss Greville agreed she told a colleague the following day that a bruise on her wrist had been caused by ‘rough sex’.
But she insisted that had been a cover story, telling the jury she had been ‘embarrassed’ and ‘didn’t want to admit’ it had been sustained in an assault by Giggs.
Chris Daw QC, representing Giggs, suggested to her that ‘you did from time to time get bruises from sex’. ‘not that I recall,’ Miss Greville, who sat in the witness box at Manchester Crown Court behind a curtain shielding her from Giggs’s seat in the dock and the public gallery.
Mr Daw then read out an exchange of messages from them a few weeks later in which she wrote: ‘I want you so badly rough.’
Giggs replied, ‘I’m scared of hurting you’, to which Miss Greville responded: ‘I want it to hurt a little.’
When Giggs replied that it was ‘a fine line’, Miss Greville wrote: ‘We will just have to have fun finding that line then.’
Giggs sent a photograph of a sex toy from lingerie brand agent Provocateur, to which she asked: ‘What’s that?’ When he replied that she had ‘asked me to be a bit more assertive, she messaged back: ‘I’m intrigued. When are you using this?’
Giggs then sent a photograph of a pair of handcuffs from the same label, writing: ‘Just after you have used these bad boys.’ Miss Greville replied: ‘amazing.’
Miss Greville agreed there were ‘dozens’ of ‘incredibly affectionate’ messages between the pair during a five-day period after the alleged Dubai incident.
In one she referred to him as ‘my gorgeous man’ and said she’d ‘had the best time as always’.
Miss Greville claimed this was her way of ‘overcompensating’ after Giggs made her feel his outbursts were ‘my fault’. ‘I was in denial about actually what had happened,’ she added.
Mr Daw said it was his client’s case that all he had done was take her hand off his when he was putting her suitcase into the corridor following the row.
‘I am going to suggest what you are saying is a complete pack of lies,’ he told her. Bursting into tears, Miss Greville responded: ‘But it isn’t a pack of lies.’
She told the court their relationship started in 2013 when she was in a ‘controlling marriage’ and noticed the football star was interested in her while doing PR work for one of his companies.
But she said she was vulnerable and he used ‘techniques’ such as repeatedly saying her name to lure her in. Mr Daw asked her whether Giggs’s ‘public profile or wealth’ had ‘anything to do with your interest in him?’
She replied: ‘It was not the money side that was attractive. If anything, that he was a footballer, it put me off.’
Mr Daw asked her whether she was ‘planning on seeking a large sum of compensation when this is over?’ Miss Greville replied: ‘absolutely not.’
asking whether it was her case that Giggs had been ‘manipulating’ her into a relationship, Mr Daw highlighted a ‘provocative’ photograph of herself in her gym gear which she had sent him shortly after they first met.
In a message referencing the photo years later, the jury was told Miss Greville wrote: ‘I knew exactly what I was doing.’
In response, she told the court she meant she knew he was ‘interested’ in her.
She said it ‘felt like escapism’ when Giggs showed her attention, describing him ‘lovebombing’ her – when someone is bombarded with affection and flattery – and acting like a ‘knight in shining armour’.
‘I literally thought he was the best thing in the world, and it was a fairytale where we would end up together and have a family,’ she added.
Miss Greville said they first had sex in December 2014 while on a work event at a hotel in London and she left her husband Damian the following February.
In a subsequent message she sent to him which was read to the jury, she wrote: ‘Our sex is out of this world.’
But she told the court that Giggs’s alleged controlling behaviour affected her friendships and ‘he isolated me from certain people’. It also ‘interfered with my ability to interact with my family’, she added.
The couple regularly broke up and blocked messages from one another after arguments provoked by allegations of infidelity, flirting and whether he was going to leave his wife, Stacey, the trial has been told.
But Miss Greville said alleged violence by Giggs was ‘not regular’ and he would use aggression more as a form of control, saying he had ‘two extremes’. ‘It was hot and cold. Two different people,’ she told the jury.
Mr Daw asked her about a statement the day before the start of the trial this week, in which she said she had felt like ‘a slave to Mr Giggs’s every need and every demand’.
‘That is what it felt like,’ she replied. ‘When Ryan said do something, I would do it.’
Miss Greville said she always did as she was told ‘otherwise there were consequences’.
She said ‘for four-and-half years he was nice’, but that towards the end of their relationship ‘it was much pretty much relent
‘I thought we would have a family’
lessly awful’. The trial has heard that Miss Greville returned from the Middle East at the start of 2018 to work for a hospitality company owned by Giggs and his former Manchester United team-mate Gary Neville.
She had a ‘six-figure’ salary and rented an apartment in central Manchester.
That year she sent Giggs a Valentine’s Day card in which she wrote: ‘Three years ago I did not think I could be more proud of you than I was. You are my inspiof
‘You are my world, my drive’
ration, my world, my drive.’ Mr Daw said this card was found by Giggs’s daughter Libby – then aged 14 – who ‘put two and two together’ and worked out they had been seeing each other he was still married to her mother. Giggs and his wife divorced in 2017.
The jury was told that police had wanted Miss Greville to hand over her phone as part of their investigations so her messages could be examined, only for her to say she had dropped it in a river.
‘I tried to rescue my dog from the water and it had slipped out my pocket and into the river,’ she said yesterday.
Later another phone went missing when she was mugged, she added.
Officers told her the data could be retrieved from the remote iCloud data storage facility, but she refused to let them, saying she didn’t trust police at the time because she thought they were ‘selling stories’ about her.
In addition, she did not want details of her company revealed and potentially passed to Giggs, she added, saying she didn’t want him to ‘damage my career’.
However, the jury was told that ultimately Miss Greville provided the material which the defence had requested.
Mr Daw suggested she ‘deliberately withheld information that would undermine the case against Mr Giggs’. But she responded: ‘I didn’t.’
He also asked her about an email Giggs sent her entitled ‘blackmail’ after she blocked him following a row.
Miss Greville said Giggs had threatened to circulate an attached video to her work colleagues if she didn’t unblock him.
She told police ‘it could have been a sexual video’ because he had ‘randomly’ sent her a naked picture of himself moments earlier, but she deleted it without viewing it. Mr Daw played the jury what he said was the clip in question, which in fact showed a group of women in Santa hats dancing to a Christmas song at a party.
But she denied she had previously known it was innocuous in nature, insisting she hadn’t watched it at the time.
Asked why she agreed to send him sexual videos – which he had deleted – after they got back together just weeks later if she believed he had been trying to blackmail her, Miss Greville said she ‘thought he had changed’.
On Tuesday, Miss Greville told the jury that Giggs grabbed her by the shoulders and headbutted her on November 1, 2020, after she confronted him about his serial cheating. She said in
‘I tried to rescue my dog’
the lead-up to the alleged assault, she had learned he had been having ‘full-on relationships’ with eight women while they were together.
The discovery of messages ‘going back years’ on Giggs’s iPad prompted her to decide to leave him, she said.
Giggs, 48, denies using controlling and coercive behaviour against Miss Greville between August 2017 and November 2020. He has also pleaded not guilty to assaulting her, causing her actual bodily harm, and of the common assault of her sister Emma who was alleged also hurt in the tussle over the phone.
Giggs stood down in June as manager of the Wales football 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.
The trial continues, with Miss Greville’s cross-examination due to resume today.