Agatha Christie star won’t be charged
BRITISH actor Ed Westwick will not be charged after he was accused of sexually assaulting four women, Los Angeles police said last night.
Westwick, 31, was thrown off the BBC’s Agatha Christie adaptation due to the claims.
Ordeal by Innocence, intended to be the highlight of the corporation’s Christmas TV schedule, was shot again with a new actor and eventually shown at Easter.
Westwick was accused of rape or sexual assault by four women. He strongly denied the claims but was also forced to stop filming his BBC comedy, White Gold.
In November, Westwick was accused of raping two actresses in 2014 – Kristina Cohen and Aurelie Wynn.
Hollywood assistant Rachel Eck later claimed the Gossip Girl actor had ‘pushed her on to a bed and groped her’ the night before the 2014 Oscars.
And in March, stylist Haley Camille Freedman, 23, accused the star of locking her in his Hollywood house and repeatedly raping her. In a lawsuit, she called him a ‘violent sexual predator’.
Yesterday, prosecutors said two women accusers had identified witnesses, but the information would not ‘enable the prosecution to prove either incident beyond a reasonable doubt’. The prosecution would not go ahead due to ‘insufficient evidence’.
A third alleged victim could not be contacted and that case would also not go ahead. Investigators confirmed complaints made by ‘other women’ were outside the statute of limitations.
Westwick, in a since-deleted tweet, issued a rebuttal after the first claim of assault. ‘I do not know this woman,’ he wrote. ‘I have never forced myself in any manner, on any woman. I certainly have never committed rape.’