Broadcaster Stuart Hall pleads guilty to 14 indecent assaults

Former BBC presenter Stuart Hall has pleaded guilty to 14 indecent assaults including one on a girl aged just nine-years-old at the time.

He admitted the offences on 16th April this year but reporting restrictions were put in place as the crown prosecution service considered whether a charge of rape should proceed to trial. Hall will be sentenced on 17th June at Preston Crown Court.

The CPS described him as an “opportunistic predator” and hopes this case will show victims of abuse will not be denied justice.

“His victims did not know each other and almost two decades separated the first and last assaults but almost all of the victims, including one who was only nine at the time of the assault, provided strikingly similar accounts.

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.” – Nazir Afzal, Chief Crown Prosecutor for the CPS

Stuart Hall had worked for the BBC and ITV over the years. He is mainly known nationwide as presenter on BBC game show It’s A Knockout and a football commentator on television and radio. In the north for 25 years, he was a presenter for the North West Manchester based version of BBC Look North.

Recently up until his arrest last year he was working for BBC Radio 5 Live providing football commentary. The BBC has said today that he is “no longer contracted” with them and that the corporation is “appalled by the disgraceful actions of Stuart Hall.”