Katie Price has told the court during Kieran Hayler’s rape trial that she has not seen media reports about it as she’s been ‘handcuffed to Suella Braverman’.
This is the 48-year-old reality star’s second day testifying in the trial where her ex-husband Hayler has been charged with three counts of rape and one count of sexually assaulting a then 13-year-old girl at an address in West Sussex from June to October 2016.
Today saw her cross-examination as a witness. She was asked if she had been following media reports regarding the trial.
The mother-of-five replied: ‘No, because I’ve been handcuffed to Suella Braverman all week’. Her comment refers to the Channel 4 television show Celebrity Handcuffed.
She will star in the next season, which has recently commenced filming, in which two opposite figures are handcuffed to one another to see how long they can last. She was paired with Reform UK spokesperson and former Conservative MP Braverman.
Elsewhere, Hayler’s lawyer Arlette Piercy, characterised her as ‘ angry and vengeful towards the defendant Kieran Hayler’ and said she had ‘evidenced a vendetta against’ him for years.
To which Price – who was married to Hayler between 2013 and 2021 – responded: ‘That is not true’.
In another exchange, she told Piercy there wasn’t ‘any venom’ towards Hayler and that they had an amicable split.
Previously, jurors were shown messages exchanged between Price and the girl, who was aged 14 at the time. In one interaction, Price asked: ‘Did [Hayler] kiss you? I won’t bring up anymore just want truth. I will make you a little star.’
Questioned on her use of the phrase ‘little star’, she said it was ‘just a figure of speech’ and, when pressed, said ‘there’s no agenda or nothing behind it.’
The court also heard that Hayler had an affair with the couple’s nanny, to which Price explained the nanny was ‘younger than’ herself.
When Piercy said: ‘You chose her because she wasn’t very attractive and she was a little bit overweight,’ Price responded: ‘Absolutely. There was a reason for that.’
During yesterday’s testimony, Price shared that she was ‘shocked’ at the allegations.
‘I was shocked… like really shocked. It was a different kettle of fish, it’s a child,’ she said in court. She said she confronted her then-husband asking if he had ‘done stuff’.
‘I can’t remember his response but his response all the time was “no I hadn’t”,’ she told prosecutor Ryan Richte when asked about his response to her.