BBC host ‘lifted skirt and asked boy of 14: Want to play with this?’
A BBC DJ was ‘flattered’ when a teenager joined her for a woodland sex session after spying on her ‘petting’ with her husband behind trees, she told a court yesterday.
Julie Wadsworth, 60, is accused of seducing the then 14-year-old after inviting him to ‘come and have a play’ when he and a group of his underage friends found her sunbathing topless.
But giving evidence in her defence yesterday, the grandmother told a jury that the boy was on his own when he approached her and husband tony, now 69, in a secluded area known as the outwoods.
the couple are on trial accused of a string of sex offences dating back to the Nineties involving two groups of under-age boys.
earlier, another alleged victim told the court how Wadsworth, who was 37 at the time, performed sex acts with him and his friends after she lifted up her skirt in the woods and asked them: ‘Do you want to play with this?’
the man, who was also 14 at the time, said he was led into the treeline by the radio host, then returned to his friends after the sexual encounter and asked: ‘Who’s next?’
he then waited while two of his friends went into the bushes separately with her. Dur- ing her police interview, she accepted performing a sex act on the first complainant – but claimed he had been 17.
She described the encounters as ‘just touchyfeely, a fumble’ to start with, before admitting things then progressed further.
She added: ‘i’d no reason to believe he was under-age – he was 17.’
in the witness box yesterday, she told the jury about the petting incident, when an alleged victim performed a sex act as he watched her and her husband kissing in woodland beside Atherstone Golf Club in Warwickshire.
She said: ‘We were in the woods petting and became aware that we were being watched by a young man. We stopped what we were doing. it was as much a shock for us as for him. he just stood there and didn’t make an attempt to run away because we had spotted him. then he came towards us and we joined together.
‘My top was open. he started touching my chest and i finished off what he was doing.’
She said the youth, who the jury heard was aged 14 when he first met the married couple in the woods, left quickly without talking to them. She claimed he appeared to be aged 17 or 18.
Asked by David hislop QC, her defence barrister, how she felt after the encounter, she said: ‘it was flattering – he was obviously attracted to me.’
Warwick Crown Court has already heard how the boy, now a 37-year-old man, claimed to have had a threesome with the couple at their home, one of up to 15 sex sessions with her.
the couple, of Broughton Astley, leicestershire, used to broadcast on BBC radio leicester and then the corporation’s WM station in Birmingham.
they deny five counts of outraging public decency. She also denies 11 indecent assaults, while he denies nine.
Both defendants were formally cleared of an additional charge of indecent assault yesterday after the Crown said no evidence would be offered.
the trial continues.
‘Touchy-feely, a fumble’