Blast at lack of barriers over bridge terror attack

SOAP actor and musician Craig McLachlan has been charged with a string of sex offences.

The former Neighbours star, 53, has been charged with eight counts of indecent assault, one of attempted indecent assault and one of common law assault.

The alleged offences are thought to relate to when he played the role of Dr Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Show stage musical in Australia in 2014.

A spokesman for the Aussie star said: “Craig is innocent of these charges which will be vigorously defended.”

McLachlan is due to appear at Melbourne magistrates court on February 8.

His career has included a stint in soap Home and Away and the main role in The Doctor Blake Mysteries crime drama series on BBC1 from 2013.

He also starred in BBC show Bugs between 1995 and 1999. With his band Craig McLachlan & Check 1–2, he had a number two hit in the UK in 1990 with the single Mona.

His partner Vanessa Scammell, a conductor with Opera Australia, spoke in defence of McLachlan when allegations emerged this year on Australian TV.

She said: “He’s kind and gentle... Yes he’s mischievous, but one of his greatest assets is he loves to make people happy and comfortable.

“We will do everything we can to move through this and clear his name.” McLachlan vehemently denies the allegations, saying previously: “By God I will fight this. And the truth, the BARRIERS should have been put up before the London Bridge terror attack because of the Westminster incident three months earlier, a lawyer for bereaved families said.

Eight people died when a van truth will come out.” He also said: “They seem to be simple inventions, perhaps made for financial reasons, perhaps to gain notoriety.

“They are to the best of my knowledge utterly and entirely false.”

He sued the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Fairfax Media for reporting the claims. The defamation hearing was set down for four weeks from February 4 in the Supreme Court of New South Wales.

McLachlan left the stage production of The Rocky Horror Show in 2018.

It is not clear if the charges relate to allegations made against him by the stage show’s actresses. Police in the McLACHLAN’S SPOKESMAN AFTER THE STAR WAS CHARGED rammed pedestrians then three men knifed people in Borough Market on June 3, 2017 before they were shot dead by police.

Gareth Patterson, QC for six of the families, told an Old Bailey Australian state of Victoria said yesterday the Sexual Offences and Child Abuse Investigation Team in Melbourne had charged a 53-year-old New South Wales man with the 10 alleged offences.

McLachlan rose to fame in 1987 in Aussie soap Neighbours as Henry Ramsay, the brother of Charlene played by Kylie Minogue.

They appeared alongside the likes of Anne Charleston as on-screen mum Madge, and Ian Smith as Madge’s husband Harold Bishop.

McLachlan was married in the 1990s to Neighbours co-star Rachel Friend, who played his on-screen girlfriend Bronwyn Davies.

He has a son, Jacob, with actress Charlotte Avery.

Craig is innocent of these charges which will be vigorously defended

pre-inquest hearing: “The pavements were wide open, despite what happened at Westminster.”

An inquest into that attack, when Khalid Masood hit pedestrians with a car before stabbing a police British officer to death, was told that after it no consideration was given to barriers. Yet within a day of the London Bridge atrocity, work began to erect barriers, Mr Patterson said.

The full inquest opens in May.