Ex-BBC broadcaster Stuart Hall has been found guilty on one count of indecent assault – but cleared on 19 other child sex charges, including raping two girls.
Hall had also faced 15 charges of rape and four counts of indecent assault.
The 84-year-old was accused of abusing the girls between 1976 and 1981 and is currently serving a 30-month sentence after admitting he indecently assaulted 13 other girls, one as young as nine, over the course of nearly 20 years.
And the former presenter from Wilmslow, Cheshire mouthed ‘thank you’ to the jurors as he was led away to the cells to continue serving his 30-month sentence for earlier offences.
At the beginning of his Preston Crown Court trial, the former It’s a Knockout presenter pleaded guilty to indecently assaulting one of the two new complainants when she was 13-years-old.
Throughout his trial, Hall insisted that the two new complainants who claimed they were raped had agreed to consensual sex.
Hall’s barrister Crispin Aylett argued that, according to law at the time the offences were alleged to have happened, he would have been charged with unlawful sex with a girl under the age of 16.
Hall gave no reaction as the innocent verdicts were read out after more than seven hours of deliberation, while detectives and Crown Prosecution Service lawyers looked on in shock.
He had originally been jailed for 15 months before the sentence was doubled of claims it was too ‘lenient’.
Image courtesy of BBC via YouTube, with thanks
