Stuart Hall receives further jail term for indecent assault of girl

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/may/23/stuart-hall-jail-term-indecent-assault-underage-girl

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The disgraced broadcaster Stuart Hall has been sentenced to another two and a half years in prison for indecently assaulting an underage girl.

The former It's A Knockout presenter was cleared last week of 15 counts of rape in relation to two women who claimed they were sexually assaulted by him between 1976 and 1981. But the 84-year-old was convicted by the jury at Preston crown court of indecently assaulting one of the complainants when she was under the age of 16, and had earlier pleaded guilty to another indecent assault on the same girl when she was 13.

The charge Hall admitted involved an incident at a dinner party when he crept into his victim's bedroom and assaulted her.

The married father-of-two is currently serving a 30-month jail term after he pleaded guilty last year to indecently assaulting 13 other girls, aged between nine and 17, over a 20-year period.

The ex-BBC Radio 5 Live football match commentator had not been due for release from that custodial sentence until September. He will now not be eligible for release until December 2015 as Friday's sentence will only begin after the end of his current jail term.

Passing sentence, Lord Justice Turner said of his offences: "It was an act of vile bravado and horrible betrayal."

Hall, wearing a dark suit, white shirt and striped tie, was excused from standing as sentence was passed. He sat impassively in the dock, with his head bowed, his legs crossed and his hands resting on his lap as he listened to the proceedings through a large pair of headphones.

The victim sat metres away and began wiping away tears with a handkerchief passed to her, as details of the offences were again mentioned in court.

The judge said one of the aggravating factors of the offences against the victim was Hall's initial public denials of guilt.

He added: "Your lack of remorse evinced in your prepared statement to the police in which you expressed confected surprise against all the allegations against you when you knew you had molested her."

Hall was sentenced to 12 months for the offence to which he admitted and an additional 18 months for the indecent assault of which he was convicted by the jury. He will serve half of the new sentence in custody before he is released on licence.

The judge said that, had Hall committed the dinner party offence in more recent years, his conduct would have been classed as assault by penetration. It is understood that, in Hall's circumstances, that would have led to a minimum eight-year jail term.

The second assault, in which he had oral sex with the victim before her 16th birthday, would have been categorised today as sexual activity with a child. That too would have exceeded the maximum sentence the judge could impose on Friday.

He said: "The sentence for each offence has to be limited to the maximum sentence at the date when the offence was committed. This, therefore, is a ceiling beyond which this court is not permitted to go.

"It is a long-standing principle both of the English common law and under article 7 of the European convention on human rights that no one may be punished more severely for an offence than the extent to which he or she could have been punished under the law that prevailed at the time the offence was committed. In that regard, therefore, the hands of this court are tied."