PR guru Clifford launches appeal over sex assaults

PAEDOPHILE Max Clifford is seeking to have his convictions quashed after claiming new evidence contradicts the accounts of his victims.

The disgraced publicist was jailed for eight years in 2014 for eight historical sexual assaults on four teenagers aged 15 to 19.

But documents lodged at the Court of Appeal claim Clifford, pictured below, was feeding a neighbour’s pet in London when he was said to have met a 15-year-old girl in Spain in 1977, who he later abused.

The victim, who gave a newspaper interview under the pseudonym Cathy Johnson, was on holiday when Clifford met her in August 1977, just after Elvis Presley died. Among those claiming Clifford was in the UK at this time is his former neighbour, Andrea Robinson.

Appeal papers say she ‘recalls being on holiday in Tenerife at the time of Elvis Presley’s death, and that Max Clifford was looking after her rabbit in the UK’. Two other people say Clifford spoke to them from his London office just after Presley died. A second victim, Sharon Elliott, waived her right to anonymity in an interview with The Mail on Sunday to tell how Clifford used a pay-phone in a London nightclub before abusing her in the toilets. But the appeal claims the club had no such phone. It also disputes the evidence of a third victim. Clifford was the first person to be convicted under Operation Yewtree, the police probe launched after the Jimmy Savile scandal. Law firm Slater and Gordon, representing his victims, said it was aware of the appeal but could not comment.