British broadcaster stripped of honor over sex assaults

LONDON, United Kingdom – Veteran British broadcaster Stuart Hall was be stripped of a prestigious honor on Tuesday, October 22, after being jailed for a string of indecent assaults, a government source said.

Hall, 83, was made an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE) last year – two steps below a knighthood – for his services to broadcasting and charity.

But an independent forfeiture committee has decided to remove the honor as it risks bringing the system into disrepute, in a decision signed off by the prime minister and the queen.

It will be formally announced in the London Gazette, the journal of record, later Tuesday, the source told Agence France-Presse.

Hall, who presented the hit BBC television show “It’s a Knockout” in the 1970s and 1980s and later became a well-known radio football commentator, was described by prosecutors as an “opportunistic predator.”

He was jailed in June after admitting to 14 charges of indecently assaulting girls aged between 9 and 17 between 1967 and 1987, when he regularly appeared on British TV.

In July, the Court of Appeal doubled his original 15-month jail sentence, saying it was inadequate.

Police began investigating Hall after a woman wrote to a newspaper columnist to complain about his OBE, saying he had abused her.

Savile was later revealed to be a serial child sexual abuser.

Savile is only one of several celebrities arrested under Operation Yewtree after abuse allegations surfaced against late BBC presenter Jimmy Savile, one of the best-known faces in British entertainment from the 1960s until the 1990s.

British radio presenter Dave Lee Travis on Tuesday pleaded not guilty to a series of charges of indecent assault and one charge of sexual assault.

The 68-year-old former BBC star, one of the biggest names in British broadcasting during the 1970s and 1980s, denied a total of 15 charges.

He is accused of 14 counts of indecent assault between 1976 and 2003, and one count of sexual assault in 2008.

Wearing a green jacket over a white shirt, he replied “Not guilty” to each of the charges as they were read out by a court official.

A trial is due to begin on January 14, 2014. The hearing is expected to last five or six weeks. – Rappler.com

(Editors’ Note: We inadvertently used a photo of producer Stuart Cornfeld (also by AFP) in an earlier version of this story. We apologize to Mr Cornfeld and our readers.)