A woman has claimed that the former television star and convicted paedophile Stuart Hall used his own ‘annexe’ of his BBC dressing room to rape her. The claim came as Hall faces trial for sexual offences and the first of his latest two alleged victims took the stand at Preston Crown Court, according to the Daily Mail.
Hall has already been convicted of indecently assaulting 13 girls aged from 9 years old to 17. He was originally sentenced to just 15 months in prison but the Crown appealed and this was increased to 30 months. He is still serving that sentence and is brought from prison every day to sit in the dock.
The woman, who is now in her 40s, shed tears as she described how the veteran broadcaster sexually abused her at two of BBC studio’s in Manchester. She claimed that she was taken into an “ante-room” with a leather sofa and “subdued” lighting were she was raped. A woman also claimed that she had first been attacked by Hall when she was just 12 years old.
The alleged victim, known only as Girl B, was invited by Hall to the BBC studios when she was 13 years old because she had become interested in career in television. She watched Hall work at the Piccadilly Studios in the centre of Manchester
She told the prosecuting barrister Peter Wright QC, that intercourse would then take place when she visited him. She said: “It was expected and I just did it. I figured that the quicker it was done, the quicker it was over and it would stop.
“He told me categorically that I wanted it. Those words remain in my head. It was a constant narrative – how beautiful I was, how much I wanted it, how my body had responded.”
She claimed that when she was about 15 the abuse moved to the BBCs studio on Oxford Road, again in Manchester City Centre. She said: “There was an ante-room…a leather sofa on the back wall. Along the sofa was a mirror and there was this shelf there with various pictures of women. The lighting was subdued.
“I spent a lot of time locked in there. Not answering the door. He told me not to answer the door. He locked me in.”
The 84 year old former presenter was a fixture on British television for decades, and was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire by the Queen. However the honour, which entitles holder to wear a special medal and use the post-nominals ‘OBE’, was formally withdrawn after he pleaded guilty to the first set of allegations.
In 1999 the Labour MP for Stalybridge and Hyde, Tom Pendry, put down a motion in Parliament congratulating Hall on 40 years in broadcasting. But Hall has been described as a man who treated young girls as sexual “playthings” after plying them with alcohol.
At the start of the trial, Crispin Aylett QC, representing Hall, conceded that his client was a convicted paedophile but denied that he was a rapist.
Taking the unusual step of addressing the court at the start of the trial he said: “The defendant says in his pleas of not guilty that whatever his shortcomings, whatever he has done – and none of this should have happened – he says ‘I am not a rapist’, and that in due course is the issue you will have to decide.”
Both girls and their families were known to the Stuart Hall, he denies the allegations and the trial continues.
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