BBC's Stuart Hall admits to assaults

Veteran TV and radio presenter Stuart Hall admitted 14 charges of indecently assaulting girls as young as nine, prosecutors said on Thursday, in the latest blow to Britain's entertainment establishment sparked by the Jimmy Savile scandal.

Hall, the 83-year-old presenter of the hit television show It's a Knockout in the 1970s and 1980s, was an "opportunistic predator" who befriended his victims before assaulting them, prosecutors said.

A day earlier, actor William Roache, who has played Ken Barlow in the world's longest-running soap opera Coronation Street for more than half a century, was charged with two counts of raping a 15-year-old girl dating back to 1967.

Roache, 81, said Thursday he was "astounded and deeply horrified by the extraordinary events of the last 24 hours" and he "strenuously" denied the allegations.

The charges against the two men are not related to Savile, a household name for five decades in Britain as a DJ and TV presenter, who has been the focus of hundreds of allegations of rape and indecent assault, many of them concerning under-age girls, since his death in October 2011.

Yet they do involve allegations dating back decades involving stars now in the twilight of their careers.

The assaults Hall has admitted to concern 13 victims and took place between 1967 and 1985, when he regularly appeared on television in Britain.

Hall's victims did not know each other but "almost all of the victims, including one who was only nine at the time of the assault, provided strikingly similar accounts", said Nazir Afzal, chief crown prosecutor for northwest England.

"Whether in public or private, Hall would first approach under friendly pretences and then bide his time until the victim was isolated. He can only be described as an opportunistic predator," he added.

Hall had previously denied the assaults and described them as "pernicious, callous, cruel and above all spurious".

But he admitted the 14 offenses in a court hearing in April although the details could not be reported until Thursday. He will be sentenced on June 17.

Hall did not comment as he left Preston Crown Court in northwest England after a hearing on Thursday, but his lawyer said he wanted to apologize to his victims.

Crispin Aylett said, "He is not a man easily moved to self pity, but he is all too aware that his disgrace is complete."

Known for his florid descriptive style, scattered with allusions to literary classics, Hall was in recent years a familiar voice on BBC radio commenting on English Premier League football but has not worked for the corporation since the allegations first emerged.

The Savile scandal led to the resignation of the corporation's director-general and fevered soul-searching at the world's biggest broadcaster.

(China Daily 05/04/2013 page7)