Hayler denies alternative charges and alleges Price coached complainant

Kieran Hayler pleaded not guilty to four newly added alternative charges of sexual activity with a child at Lewes Crown Court on Thursday. He also told jurors he believed his former wife, Katie Price, had coached the complainant in the rape case against him. Price disputes his account of her messages to the girl. [1] [2] [4] [5]

Hayler, 39, is already on trial over three charges of rape and one of sexual assault relating to alleged offences in West Sussex in 2016, when the complainant was 13. He denies that any sexual activity took place. The new charges were added after the prosecution closed its case, for the jury to consider as alternatives to the original charges. [1] [2]

Hayler said he photographed messages on Price’s phone in 2017 and sent the pictures to his solicitor only recently, after finding them while moving house. “I thought she was coaching her into [saying] something she shouldn’t,” he told the jury. That was his interpretation of the messages, not a finding that Price influenced the complainant. [1] [2]

Jurors had earlier seen an exchange in which Price said she had heard Hayler and the girl had kissed. The girl initially replied that “nothing happened”; Price later asked whether he had kissed her and wrote: “I will make you a little star.” The complainant told the court she had been “trying to brush it off” when she sent her initial reply, and denied making up the allegations. [3]

Price said she had wanted information from the girl because the matter was serious. She called “little star” a figure of speech and denied a defence suggestion that she had a vendetta against Hayler. [4]