Ryan Giggs trial jury discharged after failing to reach verdict

A jury has been discharged after failing to reach a verdict on allegations of assault and controlling behaviour against the former footballer Ryan Giggs.

Giggs, 48, had been charged with deliberately head-butting his former girlfriend, Kate Greville, and elbowing her younger sister in the face during an argument at his home in Greater Manchester on 1 November 2020.

He was also accused of using coercive and controlling behaviour against Greville, 38, over a period of three years from 2017 to 2020.

The former Manchester United and Wales footballer denied all three charges and protested his innocence during a three-week trial at Manchester crown court.

A panel of 11 jurors, made up of seven women and four men, had been considering their verdicts after one juror was discharged when they became ill two days into deliberations.

The Crown Prosecution Service will now decide whether to seek a retrial.

The 12-day trial heard how Giggs was accused of deliberately head-butting Greville after elbowing her younger sister, Emma Greville, in the face during a scuffle over a mobile phone.

The incident at Giggs’s £2.7m home brought to an end a six-year on-off relationship that Greville said became “utter hell” during Covid-19 lockdown in 2020.

Greville, a PR executive, said she became “a slave to his every need” and that Giggs “made me feel like I had to do what he said, otherwise there were consequences”.

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The former Wales manager insisted that he had never been violent to any woman, or used coercive or controlling behaviour against them. His barrister, Chris Daw QC, has said the allegations were based on