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Katie Price snapped at her ex-husband Kieran Hayler’s lawyer during his child rape trial, declaring: ‘I won’t have anybody call me a liar.’
The 48-year-old reality star became embroiled in a heated exchange with barrister Arlette Piercy during her cross-examination at Lewes Crown Court on Wednesday.
Price told Piercy: ‘It was all wrong what he did. He’s just a wrong’un, I know he’s done stuff with the [complainant], I got the messages.
‘You shouldn’t turn this case against me. The real reason why we’re here is what he’s done to a child, not me.’
When Price asked the lawyer: ‘Are you calling me a liar?’, Piercy replied: ‘I am.’
An angry Price responded: ‘I don’t need to be here. You can see in black and white something’s gone on. I won’t have anybody call me a liar.’
Price also accused Piercy of ‘discrimination’ after the barrister referenced ‘cocaine and booze benders’.
‘Everyone knows I self-medicated on coke due to Kieran introducing it,’ Price told the court.
‘You are wrong and trying to discriminate me. The press know it all because of my journey. I ended up in therapy and tried to kill myself twice.
‘You’re not going to slander my name. I don’t care if you are a barrister, you are not going to slander my name like that. I don’t need to sit here like a therapy session.’
Hayler, 39, denies three counts of rape and one count of sexual assault of a girl who was 13 at the time of the alleged offences in 2016. His defence has suggested Price launched a campaign against him following the breakdown of their marriage.
Price, who has now concluded giving evidence after three days, also insisted she had never approached the press or police about the allegations against Hayler.
‘Too right – it’s disgusting,’ she said when challenged over repeatedly discussing the allegations.
‘But I never went to the press, never. Never once went to the media about it, never once went to the police about it – that was [the complainant], not me.’
During her earlier testimony, Katie 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’.
The reality star was 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.
During Tuesday’s 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 Monday’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.
The trial continues.