Graham Linehan, the once successful British television writer and producer who has become an outspoken transphobe, was recently convicted of criminal damage for throwing a transgender 17-year-old’s phone during a confrontation in October 2024. The court said the victim’s trans identity didn’t play a significant role in the crime, clearing Linehan of potential hate crime enhancements to his conviction.

Linehan must now pay a fine of £500 ($660), court costs of £650 ($858), and a statutory surcharge of £200 ($264). However, the U.K. court that convicted him found the 57-year-old TV writer not guilty of criminal harassment for making social media posts about the confrontation after it occurred.

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Linehan admitted in court that he grabbed the phone of a then-17-year-old transgender teen named Sophia Brooks during a street confrontation outside the Battle of Ideas conference in Westminster, London in October 2024.

Linehan’s defense witness — Katherine Harris, co-founder of the transphobic organization LGB Alliance UK — said that Brooks stood up in the conference audience during a panel discussion and snapped pics and video of Linehan and the other speakers using her phone.

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“It was a deliberate, intimidatory move on his part and he would not stop,” Harris said, misgendering Brooks during the trial. “He was photographing anybody and everybody he could, and it felt intrusive and aggressive.

“It felt as though he wanted to get everybody, to get all of us in his power through his camera, to say, ‘I’m the big man here, I can do what I want.’ That was the message. The disruption was complete,” Harris added.

Brooks confronted the Father Ted creator outside the event and asked him why he thinks it is “acceptable to call teenagers ‘domestic terrorists.’”

In response, Linehan called her a “groomer,” a “disgusting incel,” and a “sissy-porn-watching scumbag,” Brooks testified.

Brooks said she responded by telling Linehan, “You’re the incel. You’re divorced.”

A video of the confrontation appeared to show Linehan grabbing Brooks’ phone and throwing it across the street.

When asked why he threw the phone and didn’t just return it, Linehan said, “My adrenaline was up, I was angry. I guess that feels like surrender, so I threw it away. I didn’t slam it, I just skimmed it. It was instinctive. As soon as I did it, I thought ‘that was a mistake’.”

Linehan testified that his “life was made hell” by trans activists. He called Brooks a “young soldier in the trans activist army,” adding, “He was misogynistic, he was abusive, he was snide.”

However, prosecutor Julia Faure Walker told the court, “Linehan was clearly proud of what he had done because a few days [later] he tweeted: ‘I am quite proud. I grabbed his phone and threw it across the road.’”

The prosecution told jurors that Linehan posted “relentlessly” about Brooks following their confrontation.
Walker added, “Clearly, he was pleased from gaining a sense of superiority over someone on the other side of the ideological debate.”

Linehan said of his social posts about Brooks, “He depended on his anonymity to get close to people and hurt them, and I wanted to destroy that anonymity.”

District Judge Breony Clarke found that Brooks was not “entirely truthful” and not “as alarmed or distressed” as they had claimed in response to Linehan’s tweets. As such, Clarke cleared Linehan of criminal harassment charges.

Clarke said she found Linehan’s comments “deeply unpleasant, insulting and even unnecessary”, but added “[they weren’t oppressive or unacceptable beyond merely unattractive, annoying or irritating … [and didn’t] cross the boundary from the regrettable to the unacceptable,” criminally speaking, Sky News reported.

In September, Linehan was taken into custody at London’s Heathrow Airport on suspicion of inciting anti-trans violence via social media for posting a social media message encouraging people to punch trans women “in the balls.”

After a transatlantic uproar accusing authorities of violating Linehan’s freedom of speech — the comedy writer claimed in a Substack diatribe that his “punch ’em in the balls” tweet was “a joke.” The Metropolitan Police said they won’t pursue charges.

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