BBC presenter ‘wearing f lasher’s mac and stockings had sex in park with schoolboys while co-host husband watched’
TWO married BBC DJs had sex against a tree in a country park and invited watching underage boys to join in, a court heard yesterday.
One was lured into sex after going into long grass at an adjoining golf club to retrieve his golf ball, while others were asked if they ‘wanted to play’ after seeing Julie Wadsworth sunbathing topless.
The court heard her husband Tony, now 69, would keep lookout yards away while his wife performed sex acts on the youths in a secluded area called Devil’s Cove – on one occasion bringing a camera along with him.
Alleged victims – one of whom was only 11 when he saw the couple cavorting in the woods – told police Mrs Wadsworth, 60, wore a ‘flasher’s mac’ for some of the liaisons, as well as white stockings, a suspender belt, a short skirt and high heels.
At other times she was said to have been naked beneath the coat, or wearing a skirt split at the side to reveal she had no underwear on.
The historic offences involving seven boys date back to the mid Nineties at a time when the defendants were presenting shows from the BBC’s Pebble Mill building in Birmingham for the corporation’s local WM radio station.
They use the names Wadsworth and Mayer on air, and broadcast most recently on BBC Radio Leicester. The offences involved two separate groups of friends, with those against the first group occurring in 1992 and the second dossier of evidence dating from 1995 and 1996.
Miranda Moore QC, prosecuting said that at the time, the defendants were ‘partial to having sexual encounters in the outdoors’.
One of the youths carried on seeing Mrs Wadsworth ‘before and after he turned 16’.
Miss Moore said he lost his virginity to her after she leaned out of a window at her house as he walked to school and ‘invited him in for sex’ while her husband was out.
The court heard they went on to have sex up to 15 times, sometimes at the Wadsworths’ home but usually in the woods known locally as the Outwoods, which run alongside Atherstone Golf Club in north Warwickshire.
Occasionally, they had a ‘threesome’ with Mr Wadsworth, Miss Moore said.
One sex session took place when the boy had been playing golf and his ball landed in the rough. ‘Julie emerged from the Devils Cove and said, “If you want your ball back, you’ll have to come and get it”,’ the prosecutor said, adding that Mrs Wadsworth then persuaded the boy to perform a sex act on her.
Warwick Crown Court heard that another boy was propositioned after Mrs Wadsworth lifted up her skirt in the woods to show her knickers and shouted: ‘Do you want to have a play with this?’
The incidents were reported to police in 2015 after an alleged victim attended a child protection course for his job and realised that he had been ‘groomed’ as a child.
He gave officers the names of friends he had gone to the woods with. Following this, the Wadsworths were charged, after which the earlier group of boys came forward.
Mrs Wadsworth told police she enjoyed ‘outdoor hankypanky’ with her husband to ‘spice up the sex’ when she felt ‘frisky’. But Miss Moore added: ‘The essence of this case is that both defendants deny having sexual intercourse whilst young lads were there. Even though nobody forced anyone to do anything, our children are protected if they are under 16.
‘In the eyes of the law, they cannot consent to sexual activity. Our case is that they did these things in the open, knowing and taking delight in the fact that young lads were watching... and encouraged them to join in.’
She told jurors it was ‘mainly Mrs Wadsworth who would encourage the boys, saying, ‘Come closer, come closer. Join in, touch me”.’
But she added that Mr Wadsworth was there ‘by agreement of his wife to act as lookout and as minder’, and said he would occasionally perform sex acts on himself while watching.
The court heard most of the boys were around 14, but one was 11 when he was encouraged to watch the pair cavorting, and when he was allegedly indecently assaulted by Mrs Wadsworth.
The couple, of Broughton Astley, Leicestershire, are each accused of five counts of outraging public decency. Mrs Wadsworth is also accused of 12 counts of indecent assault, including two specimen charges illustrating a repeated course of conduct against one boy. Her husband faces ten indecent assault charges.
Miss Moore said Mr Wadsworth was close enough to see ‘exactly what his wife was up to’ with boys in the woods and could be guilty of indecent assault in the same way an intruder’s lookout would be guilty of burglary in the eyes of the law.
The couple deny indecent assault and outraging public decency. The trial continues.
‘Closer... join in, touch me’