Hall guilty of sex assault but cleared of rapes
Back to jail for shamed broadcaster
SHAMED broadcaster Stuart Hall was yesterday found guilty of indecently assaulting a young girl – but cleared of 15 counts of rape.
Hall, 84, mouthed “thank you” to the jury at Preston Crown Court at the end of his two-week trial as he was led away to the cells to continue serving his sentence for other sex offences.
The former It’s a Knockout presenter had faced a string of historical allegations made by two women who claimed they were sexually assaulted by him on various dates between 1976 and 1981 when they were aged between 12 and 16.
He was yesterday convicted of indecently assaulting one of the complainants when she was under 16 and pleaded guilty at the beginning of his trial to another count of indecent assault on the same girl when she was 13.
But the jury of eight women and four men found Hall not guilty of all the counts of rape he faced and also four other counts of indecent assault he had denied.
Detectives and Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) lawyers in court appeared ashen-faced as the verdicts were delivered.
The Lancashire Constabulary and CPS later said they respected the jury’s verdicts.
Hall’s defence team did not dispute that he had sexual intercourse with both complainants but argued that it was consensual.
The prosecution tried Hall under the Sexual Offences Act 1956, which applied at the time the offences were said to have taken place.
Last week, Hall’s barrister Crispin Aylett QC was granted the unusual request to make an opening statement for the defence after the prosecution opened its case.
He told jurors that if Hall had been investigated for the offences at the time, he would have been guilty of unlawful sexual intercourse with a girl under 16, but that charge could not be brought retrospectively as there was a 12-month limit from the time of the offence when a complaint could be made.
Hall will be sentenced next Friday for two offences of indecent
Detectives and CPS lawyers appeared ashen-faced as the verdicts were delivered.
assault, for which he could receive a maximum of two years in jail on each count.
However, he will receive some credit for pleading guilty to one of the offences, which would lessen any term of imprisonment.
The charge he admitted related to an incident at a dinner party where he crept into the bedroom of his victim and assaulted her.
Hall, a married father-of-two from Wilmslow, Cheshire, was given a 15-month prison term last June after he admitted indecently assaulting 13 other young girls, aged between nine and 17, over a 20-year period.
The Court of Appeal subsequently ruled that the sentence was “inadequate” and it was doubled.
Hall was taken from prison last October and questioned about allegations from the two complainants, who came forward after his trial.
Both girls and their families were known to the defendant. He said the sex with the girls in their mid-teens had been consensual.
Many of the encounters were at BBC television studios in Manchester – at Piccadilly and at Oxford Road – where Hall was the high-profile presenter of a regional news programme.
An investigation into Hall’s conduct at the BBC has been carried out by retired High Court judge Dame Linda Dobbs.
Her inquiry forms part of the soon-to-be published Dame Janet Smith Review into the Corporation’s culture and practices during the years that Leeds-born serial sex attacker Jimmy Savile was on its staff.