Being targeted by Lynsay Watson

The disgraced trans-identifying ex-cop weaponising the justice system

This is a short post to explain why it’s a short post — the answer being because when Graham Linehan was arrested on the tarmac at Heathrow last week for three tweets, I was immediately pretty sure who was behind it. And my suspicions were confirmed in open court — the report about Graham’s supposedly criminal tweets was made by a disgraced former police officer and trans-identifying man called Lynsay Watson, who ever since he was sacked by Leicestershire Police in 2023 for gross misconduct has made what appears to be a full-time job out of putting in false crime reports against gender-critical campaigners, and seeking to judicially review any police force that declines to take them seriously.

A lot has come out about Watson in the press since Graham’s arrest, and I talked to various journalists about it. Craig Simpson of the Telegraph has been particularly good.

As you can tell from this, I’ve been immensely frustrated by the way the police have allowed themselves to be weaponised by this deranged, obsessive, anger-filled man. This has been going on for ages. Watson started posting on X and Bluesky he had reported me to the police last November — for sexual assault/harassment against a trans woman. But I never heard anything from the police until I received the paperwork for the response to an application for judicial review he had filed against my home police because they had failed to prosecute me.

Reading through the paperwork, it was clear that the investigating officer had quickly decided that the threshold for a crime wasn’t met. But that decision was reviewed, and the investigation was reopened on the order of a senior officer — with the recommendation to consider recording a non-crime hate incident (NCHI). I could see that it had indeed been reopened, and quickly re-closed, but not whether the NCHI had indeed been recorded. So I put in a subject access request (SAR).

And two weeks ago I discovered something almost unbelievable: that not an NCHI but an actual crime — criminal harassment — had been recorded against my name. Here’s a summary from an interview I gave some days ago to Iain Dale on LBC.

What my SAR said was that, against my name, the “crime” of “harassment” had been recorded with “outcome 15”, which when I looked it up means that a suspect had been identified and the victim supported police action, but the case was closed due to “evidential difficulties”.

What evidential difficulties?! The police have literally never been in touch with me about any of this. And they definitely have my address and indeed my phone number because in the past couple of years I have reported several crimes, all related to my work — the most recent of which concerned one Lynsay Watson. The only reason I even knew I had been recorded as committing a crime was because Watson was so cross that I hadn’t been prosecuted that he had applied for judicial review of that decision, and as an interested party I received the paperwork.

So what is my supposed crime? Like Graham, the core of Watson’s report concerned three tweets. Mine were about Freda Wallace, the trans-identifying man I was on a panel with nearly two years ago at the Institute of Economic Affairs. If you didn’t see it at the time, it was a shitshow (technical term). I wrote it up here.

I had Wallace blocked on X since well before that, and don’t recall ever interacting directly with him, but after that event — if you missed it at the time, you can watch it on YouTube — I made a few short, factual remarks about him and his performance at that event. In these I referred to him as “Fred”, called him a man and he/him, and referred in frank terms to the ripped fishnets he wore during the event and the speculation (incorrect) that one of his testicles was hanging out (I can report, since I was in the room, that it was not his testicle, just bulging thigh fat). I summed up some of the remarks he made during the event about himself as him being a “fetishist”.

You can watch back here (the video is age-restricted). You can see for yourself that what I said — that Wallace is a man and that he is a fetishist — he literally talks about going to fetish clubs — is true. (You’ll have to look really closely or take my word for it that it isn’t a bollock hanging out under his skirt.)

In the crime report Watson also claimed — entirely falsely and without even pretending to have any evidence — that I and/or my X followers had bombarded Wallace with abusive phone calls and done the same with his workplace. To be clear, I have never called him or his workplace, never had his phone number and never suggested anyone else did this either. I have never done anything remotely like this to anyone. And if the police had ever asked me, that’s what I would have told them.

If you’re wondering why it was Watson who put in this crime report, it was apparently because Wallace was so overcome with distress at my wickedness that he was unable to do it himself. Seriously, if you didn’t ever see the footage of the event, have a look and ask yourself whether it’s remotely plausible that he is such a delicate flower.

Even as my home police force has recorded me as having committed a crime without ever even getting in touch with me, two other police forces are trying to palm my crime report about Watson off on each other, each claiming that Watson lives on the other’s patch. I know of at least six other people who have either been targeted by Watson making a report about them, or made a report about Watson. And the same pattern is visible in all of them — his reports are taken seriously, ours aren’t.

One of them is Cathy Larkman, a distinguished ex-cop. She told Craig Simpson about what she is going through, and also talked to the Daily Mail about it.

I am in the throes of writing all this up for the Critic, the magazine where I have a regular column, but wanted to give a bit of a taster here, since that won’t be online for a while. In the meantime you can read an excellent overview of Watson’s career by blogger Stuart Campbell (Wings Over Scotland), another of Watson’s victims, and Stuart’s overview of the similar activities of one of Watson’s associates, Stephanie Hayden. The details are scarcely credible, but I can assure you that the reality is actually far worse — Stuart couldn’t possibly include it all because it would be impossible for anyone to follow.

For now, I’ll just finish by saying that this has been an incredibly dispiriting insight into the state of policing. I’m sorry for Graham for what he has been put through, and rather cross with anyone who has used this as an opportunity to put the boot in. But very glad that his mistreatment is providing an opportunity for me and others to put it all in the public domain.