In this file picture taken on Feb. 7, 2013, former broadcaster Stuart Hall speaks to reporters outside Preston Magistrate’s court in Preston. The 84-year-old repeatedly plied two young teenage girls with drink and raped them in his BBC dressing room, a court heard Wednesday, May 7, 2014. AFP PHOTO/ANDREW YATES
LONDON—British former broadcaster Stuart Hall repeatedly plied two young teenage girls with drink and raped them in his BBC dressing room, a court heard Wednesday.
Hall made them his personal playthings, “wholly submissive to his sexual demands,” state prosecutors claimed as they opened their case against the 84-year-old broadcasting veteran.
He poured champagne on the naked body of one alleged victim and took a cutting of her pubic hair as a trophy, Preston Crown Court in northwest England heard.
Hall is charged with 15 rapes and five indecent assaults against two complainants known only as Girl A and Girl B, who were under the age of consent (16) when the alleged abuse began in the late 1970s.
The presenter’s lawyer said given their ages, the jury had to consider whether, legally, what happened was unlawful sex “somewhere between rape and consent” and whether a complaint could still be brought after a more than a year.
‘Our secret’
Hall presented the hit BBC television show “It’s a Knockout” in the 1970s and 1980s, fronted the BBC regional news in northwest England and was a football commentator.
He is serving a 30-month prison sentence after admitting indecently assaulting 13 young girls or women.
In the current cases, “he exploited the position of influence he had over each of them for his own sexual gratification,” prosecutor Peter Wright told Preston Crown Court in northwest England.
Speaking of the first alleged rape, Girl A told the court that when aged 14 or 15, Hall had given her a tour of the BBC studios in Manchester, plied her with rum and cola until she was “paralytic,” then “one thing led to another.”
“I remember him being on top of me, I remember his tongue being everywhere. I just went along with it.”
Afterwards, Hall told her it was “our secret,” jurors heard.
She said she now wanted “revenge… for what he did.”
‘A naive little girl’
In cross-examination, she said Hall was charming and “good company.”
Hall’s lawyer Crispin Aylett asked her: “He didn’t rape you, did he?”
She said: “Not as such. I would not say he attacked me.”
Asked if she enjoyed sex with Hall, she answered: “In a drunken haze, probably.”
She said she was “a naive little girl… you think you are super-mature and know it all, when you are not.”
Asked if her mother was encouraging her to have intercourse with Hall, she told the court: “It could be.”
Earlier, prosecutor Wright said that in the first alleged offense against Girl B, Hall “approached her in the stables, partially removed her clothing and raped her against a wall.
“He flattered her and told her she was special and that he loved her.
“She was a pre-pubescent child.”
Hall’s lawyer Aylett told the jury that “to everyone now,” the presenter was “simply a convicted paedophile.”
But “whatever his shortcomings… and none of this should have happened—he says ‘I am not a rapist.'”
“It is still an offense to have sexual activity with a young girl under the age of 16—but she can still consent,” he said.
He questioned whether a victim would repeatedly go back to Hall’s BBC dressing room “to be submitted to yet another rape.”
“Is that how it was?”
Known for his florid descriptive style, scattered with allusions to literary classics, Hall was until recently a familiar voice on BBC radio commentating on English Premier League football.
He is one of a string of British celebrities of the 1970s and 1980s to face investigation for sexual offenses, in the wake of the revelation that one of the BBC’s biggest stars, Jimmy Savile, was a prolific child sex offender.
The case continues Thursday.