Teen victims of predator Hall: As BBC star admits he molested 13 girls, two reveal why they spoke out after 40 years to bring him to justice

Sexually abused by Stuart Hall as teenagers, they suffered decades of mental torment in silence.
But last night two of the women who helped bring the shamed TV presenter to justice spoke of their relief as he was finally unmasked as a predatory abuser.
The pair bravely waived their right to anonymity to reveal they were among 13 girls Hall molested – the youngest just nine.

Victims: Susan Harrison (left) was attacked aged 16 while Kim Wright (right) was 17 when Hall groped her

Led away: Hall outside Preston Crown Court yesterday after pleading guilty to molesting 13 girls

Susan Harrison said she was 16 when the It’s a Knockout presenter lured her to BBC premises on the false pretext of helping her record a song.
He attacked her in his car while driving her home. Another victim, Kim Wright, was 17 when Hall fondled her breasts at a show in Blackpool.
For decades they carried the shame, guilt and anger of being abused by the flamboyant Hall.
They felt they could not report the assaults at the time because they thought they would never be believed.
But years later they bravely came forward to give evidence against him.

Finally, now the 83-year-old has admitted being a serial sex offender, Susan Harrison and Kim Wright have waived their anonymity to tell the Daily Mail how he blighted their lives.

It was terrifying... Hall moved his hand up my skirt as I sat in the front of his car. I was just 16

Still haunted, 46 years on: Music tutor Susan Harrison has described how she was picked at school prize day

Susan Melville met Stuart Hall after he was hired for her school prizegiving. 
She was just 15, but he used the encounter to groom and eventually sexually assault her. 
Almost 46 years later, she described to the Mail how the TV personality who was trusted by her family lured her to BBC premises on a pretext and molested her while driving her home after plying her with alcohol. 
Susan, Hall’s first known victim, said she was riddled with guilt for not making an immediate complaint about the TV star as he went on to abuse numerous other young girls after her.
She said that when she returned home in tears her father told her: ‘He is famous and we are nobody. Nobody is going to believe you.’
She went on: ‘I feel he exploited his position within the BBC to essentially groom me and make me go to the BBC offices.
‘I am aware that Jimmy Savile did similar things to his victims where he would use his celebrity status to gain their trust and then abuse them.’ 
She was devastated by her experience with the self-confessed paedophile and she went on to attempt suicide.
But she eventually married and is now Susan Harrison, a 61-year-old mother of one.
It was in 1967 that Hall, then a 38-year-old married father of two and a presenter on the regional BBC news programme, Look North, was asked to present prizes at Longdendale High School in Hollingworth, Cheshire.
‘Usually an elderly, boring man would come and talk to us,’ recalled Mrs Harrison. ‘Mr Hall was a bit different and he was a local celebrity.’ 
Hall gave a typically flamboyant speech then insisted on kissing all the young girls when handing them their book prize.

It was in 1967 that Hall, then a 38-year-old married father of two and a presenter on the regional BBC news programme, Look North, was asked to present prizes at Longdendale High School in Hollingworth, Cheshire

‘Normally we just shook hands but Mr Hall was giving the girls a kiss,’ said Mrs Harrison, a private music tutor. ‘It was very embarrassing.’
The young Susan then took to the stage and sang Blow The Wind Southerly. After her performance she joined a dozen girls in their smart navy-blue uniform and waited for Hall to get his autograph. 
He took her to a secluded area behind the school before he offered her an ‘opportunity of a lifetime’.
‘He told me he liked my singing and to write to him at the BBC and he would arrange a recording for me,’ she recalls.  ‘I was terribly excited.’ 
The youngster sent a letter to Hall. ‘I didn’t expect him to reply because I thought perhaps he would not remember me,’ she said. ‘Anyway, I did get a reply and we were thrilled.’

Innocent and trusting: Susan in the dress she bought from Hall's wife

Hall suggested the teenager should buy herself a dress from his wife Hazel’s new boutique.
After she followed his advice, he wrote again and asked her to come to the BBC’s Manchester HQ in Piccadilly for a recording in the winter months of 1967. 
‘He said he’d arranged a recording session for me and booked an accompanist and sound recordist,’ she said. ‘I would meet him at the BBC and he would take me home afterwards as he lived in Glossop.’
Having recently turned 16, Susan was too frightened to travel into the city on her own. She wore a pale-blue suit with a knee-length skirt considered ‘decent attire’ by her grandmother, and her father chaperoned her before leaving her on the steps of the BBC.  
It was a cold and blustery day and a nervous Susan arrived at reception just after 7.30pm to be met by a man claiming to be a sound recordist, who took her down to a dingy basement area.
‘He didn’t say anything to me, didn’t introduce himself,’ she said.
‘I wasn’t made to feel welcome at all. It was all very strange. I’ve realised since then it wasn’t a recording at all. They had mocked it up. He had set it up to get me there and it is possible that others were complicit. 
‘Around five years later I did a real recording for a radio station and saw what it was meant to be like and I realised that I had been set up by him.’
Hall, she said, had turned up in a ‘bit of a flap’ claiming the pianist had failed to show up and he would have to find a replacement. 
‘I was beginning to get a bit upset realising it wasn’t all going to plan but then Mr Hall came back with this other man who was not very happy and he said to Mr Hall, “You are going to owe me one for this!”.’ 
The youngster sang a dozen songs including Someday I’ll Find You, Climb Every Mountain and A Spoonful Of Sugar, all the time being watched by Hall and several other men.
Just 20 minutes later the ‘recording’ ended and Hall asked Susan if she wanted to go for a drink before he took her home in his car. 
‘In my naivety I thought he meant lemonade and having done all that singing I agreed,’ she said.
But Hall drove the youngster to a nearby pub.
‘I said, “I can’t go in there, I’m not old enough”,’ she said. ‘He said, “Don’t worry about it, leave it with me”.

Stuart Hall with It's a Knockout score girls Glynne Geldart and Linda Ann Thomas. None of the women were his victims

So he took me in. I asked for a lemonade and he said, “No, no, have a proper drink,” so I ordered a vodka and lime because that’s what my mother’s friend drank. I hated it and I’ve never touched it since.’
Hall then tried to convince Susan, who had never experienced alcohol before, to have another drink, but she refused and pleaded with him to take her home. 
Back in the car she felt ‘incredibly nervous’ but Hall tried to relax her by making light conversation about his daughter, Francesca, who was seven at the time. 
‘All of a sudden he brought his left hand over my right leg and then moved his hand up my skirt and started touching me,’ said Mrs Harrison. ‘I was so shocked and terrified. I couldn’t do anything as I had frozen – it went on for a couple of minutes. 
‘But then I quickly moved to the left of the car away from him, squashing my legs together and just sort of curling away from him. I developed a nervous cough and he kept saying, “Wouldn’t you like me to stop the car and rub your chest with something because it’s quite bad, that cough, isn’t it?”

But realising the sort of things he was doing now I said “No” and just kept away from him. I was panicking that he wasn’t going to take me home. 
‘I was scared and I just wanted it all to go away and for me to get to my home – I was just about holding myself together so I didn’t cry. We’d trusted him to look after me, to bring me home and it had never occurred to me that this would happen.’

TV beauties: Stuart Hall with It's A Knockout score girls Jean Kelly, Tracy Dodds and Roz Tranfield in the 1980s. None of the women were his victims

Susan left the car in tears and burst into the family home, telling her parents about the attack.
‘My father was very angry and he came out to see if Mr Hall was still there but of course he had driven off,’ she said.
‘Afterwards  my father said, “He is famous and we are nobody and nobody is going to believe you if you tell.”
‘He thought the best thing was to try and get over it. I was furious but I couldn’t argue – I had to do what my parents decided. Nobody had asked me what I thought about it. The adults had all made the decision for me and we never spoke about it again.’
Susan suffered recurring bouts of depression, attempting to commit suicide three years after the attack.
‘Every time I saw him on TV I would turn it off – I absolutely couldn’t stand to see him smiling and joking. He was standing there presenting this persona but he had ruined my life.
‘I was frightened of being alone with any men so I found it very difficult to behave normally in the workplace. 
‘I started having more flashbacks and I couldn’t sleep properly. I was at a real low point and overdosed on anti-depressants.
'Luckily, my grandmother found me having convulsions. I was rushed to hospital and had my stomach pumped. I was lucky to be alive but this started a long period of depression. 
‘I still have it now to some degree but it is controlled so I am able to work and enjoy life but for many years I couldn’t. I would go on for so many years and I would be back in hospital again.’
Susan eventually managed to pull the strands of her shattered life together after regular counselling sessions and finally completed music college and met her future husband, Charles, when she was 29. 
‘I told my husband before we got married that I couldn’t bear to be touched. But he took his time and was very understanding so by the time I got married things were getting more normal.’
Mrs Harrison went on to have a daughter and began to live a seemingly normal life with a career teaching children to sing privately and her husband working as a train manager.
But on December 5 last year, she would again be confronted by painful memories when Hall was charged with indecent assault against three women.
‘I was stunned because I had always thought he had just done it to me,’ she said. ‘I felt I needed to deal with it once and for all.’ 
Mrs Harrison would become one of a further 11 women who came forward following Hall’s much-publicised arrest and lodged a complaint against him in late December.
‘I was aware that he might get off,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want vengeance, never have and I still don’t, but I do want justice and I don’t want other people to be in that position.’

Hi Kim, he said as he slid his arm around me and squeezed my breast...

Hall's nemesis: Former police woman Kim Wright who is now 55

by Helen Weathers

Kim Wright had just turned 17 when she had the misfortune to catch Stuart Hall’s eye.
A couple of months into her first job as a clerk at her local newspaper, Kim was handing out leaflets outside a ‘Home and Beauty’ exhibition when Hall, then 45, stopped to say hello.
Kim – whose teenage crush was pop singer David Essex – was distinctly underwhelmed by the balding, sweater-wearing sports commentator.
‘He had that glow of someone famous, but he was older than my parents so I didn’t exactly swoon,’ she recalls. ‘I knew he’d been on the telly. He just seemed ancient to me. He was not a pin-up of mine, I can assure you.’
Hall, his trademark bonhomie on full beam, went into the exhibition at Blackpool Winter Gardens and Kim never expected to see him again. So she was surprised when he returned alone and said: ‘Hi Kim.’
‘He slid his arm around me and then, without a word, squeezed my breast,’ said Kim, now 55. ‘He didn’t just do it and let go, he kept his hand there. I immediately told him to get off and pulled away.
Everything happened so quickly and I thought, “Dirty old man”. He acted as if nothing had happened and just walked off without saying a word.
‘I didn’t complain because the culture was different then. You didn’t make a fuss in the 70s – you would’ve been branded a troublemaker. I thought no one would take me seriously and think it was trivial, but he didn’t do it in a jokey way – it seemed very skilled to me.
‘I was left feeling very disappointed in him for taking a liberty like that. I wasn’t a groupie. I was at work. It wasn’t like I was fluttering my eyelashes going, “Oh, Mr Hall, can I have your autograph?” I wasn’t in awe of him, he was nothing to me.’
Hall might never have been brought to justice had it not been for Kim, now a retired policewoman. She says: ‘When he picked on me, he picked on the  wrong person.’
She was the first of Hall’s victims to make a formal complaint to police in November, leading a further 13 women to come forward – nine of whom were under-age when he assaulted them. The youngest was just nine years old.
‘I’ve always felt that what Stuart Hall did to me is not something he’d do once, that it was part of some kind of modus operandi,’ says Kim, who decided to make a formal complaint in the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal.

Teenage Victim: Kim Wright during her schooldays. Hall might never have been brought to justice if it hadn't been for Kim who is now a retired policewoman

‘I was convinced I couldn’t have been the only one and I felt it was my duty to report it, in case there was someone out there who daren’t. Someone who’d suffered more than me.
‘I felt that if the police could say to another victim, “You’re not the only one”, it would give them courage to come forward. It was a moral decision and when I found out about all the other women I thought, “Job done”.’ 
At the time, the attack left her bitterly humiliated. ‘I thought he felt, because I had big breasts, that he had a licence to touch them. I already felt very self-conscious about my body.
'I always felt people were talking to my chest, instead of me. I was a very confident, outgoing teenager, but never thought of myself as attractive. Boys were never interested in me, so when Stuart Hall touched me I felt it must have been only because I was well-endowed.’ 
Three years after the assault, Kim had a breast reduction operation from a DD to a B cup.
‘I probably would have had the operation anyway, but the indecent assault did not help the way I felt about myself,’ she said. ‘To this day I never wear low-cut tops and I never show my cleavage.’
Kim pushed the incident to the back of her mind, not even telling her mother, two older sisters or closest friends, but shuddered with disgust whenever Stuart Hall appeared on television.

Stuart Hall and wife Hazel in the 1970s. His indecent assaults happened between 1967 and 1986

Aged 20, after three years in the Women’s Royal Air Force, she joined the police and worked as a constable for 28 years. In 1981 she received the Queen’s Commendation for Brave Conduct after tackling and arresting violent robbers in Skelmersdale, West Lancashire, following a raid in Liverpool.

For five years she worked on the child protection team in Blackburn and says: ‘What happened to me seemed so trivial compared with the horrendous sexual abuse these children suffered, I pushed it to the back of my mind.’
Kim confided only in Tim, her husband of 17 years, and himself a former police sergeant, because he had noticed her becoming upset every time Hall was on television. 
‘I never would have said anything if the Jimmy Savile scandal hadn’t broken,’ says Kim. ‘We were sitting watching the news about Savile and I said to my husband, “I think I may need to tell the police about Stuart Hall”.
Tim was a bit taken aback and said, “Why would you want to do that?” so I said, “Something worse might have happened to someone else. If they are thinking they are the only person, they might not come forward”.
‘From my work in child protection, I know that men who abuse are protected by the silence of the abused. Despite everything these children have suffered, they feel guilty about telling, especially if there is a conviction and a family has been broken up as a result. 

The television star carried out assaults between 1968 and 1986

‘Having been a police officer, I knew I could cope with the court process and the more I thought about Hall’s behaviour, the more it disgusted me.’
Kim was standing at King’s Cross Station on December 5 last year, waiting for a train delayed by snow after a weekend in London, when she saw on the big screen television that Hall had been arrested and charged.
‘I felt sick, absolutely awful. It felt like he was intruding in my life all over again. That’s what it feels like, an invasion. You want to forget about him, but you can’t control when he appears on the television or hear his voice on the radio bringing all those memories back.’
On April 16 – Kim’s 17th wedding anniversary – Hall finally admitted 14 counts of indecent assault against 13 women.
The past few stressful months, of not knowing if she would have to give evidence or not, have taken their toll on her, but she has never regretted her decision.
‘I’ve heard people saying, “Why are these women making it up?” or “Why are they doing this to him? He’s an 83-year-old man,” but what Stuart Hall did was totally unacceptable,’ says Kim. 
'It may not have been on the scale of Jimmy Savile, but it sickened me that Hall picked on young people, some children, who couldn’t say no. I couldn’t let him get away with that.
‘To begin with he denied all the allegations, calling them spurious and pernicious. He called us liars, insisting he was innocent. Well, now the boot is on the other foot.  
‘When so many people make complaints it’s very hard for someone to claim it just didn’t happen and I’m pleased he finally pleaded guilty to save his victims the ordeal of having to give evidence.

Guilty: Stuart Hall arrives at Preston Crown Court with solicitor Maurice Watkins, where he has admitted historic sex allegations

Stuart Hall, pictured today, described the allegations as 'pernicious', then weeks later pleaded guilty to charges of indecent assault

'Do I feel sorry for Stuart Hall? Absolutely not. I thought it was pathetic of him to talk about his life of torment. What about the girls he indecently assaulted? People ask why it takes so long for women to make complaints, but I know from my police work how difficult it can be for such victims to speak out. 
‘People who behave in this way don’t just stop. These people carry on, taking liberties, because they can or until they get caught, or sometimes not, as in the case of Jimmy Savile.
'I’m sure Hall didn’t think he’d done anything wrong at all, that it was just part of the culture those days. It was obviously habitual for him.’
Kim doubts if she will attend court to see Hall sentenced on June 17. ‘I’ve done my bit,’ she says. ‘The fact that he has told the truth now is, in a way, a sentence for him and his family. I’m not a vindictive person, but I do think he’s received his just deserts.
‘Justice has been done. He’ll get what he deserves, whatever the judge feels right for him. I know I did the right thing, but I didn’t do it for me, it was for the other women.' 

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