Victim's 'relief' at Hall's guilty pleas
One of Stuart Hall’s victims has spoken of her relief at the British broadcaster’s guilty pleas to a string of indecent assaults, saying: “He’s going to be given what he deserves.”
The woman, who spoke to ITV News under the name Amy, was a teenager when Hall sexually assaulted her at the hotel where she worked.
She had been chosen to be a cheerleader on It’s a Knockout, which was being filmed in her town, and was at the hotel with Hall when he grabbed hold of her, pushing her up against a wall.
In the interview, Amy told ITV News that she had been haunted by the sound of Hall’s voice over the years and that she felt compelled to speak out about what had happened to her as a 17-year-old when allegations against the broadcaster came to light.
She said: “After the Jimmy Savile case was coming out I said to my family that I wouldn’t be at all surprised that Stuart Hall would be next and within three weeks it was coming out, all the different cases. I’m hearing it on the radio.
“I said to my husband: ’What should I do? What do you think is best?’.
“Because my husband has known for 36 years of the past, what happened.
“When I heard it on the radio, I then got in touch with the local police and they put me in touch with Preston police.”
Asked for her reaction to Hall’s guilty pleas, she said: “Relief now.
“Relief.
“That other people, their pain is going to ease.
“I know mine is.”
She added that she was: “Very, very pleased after all this time.
“The fact he went so long saying he was innocent and now the proof came out... he’s going to be given what he deserves.”
Amy said of Hall’s original protestation of innocence: “I knew all along with all the cases coming out, that there was no way he wasn’t, but obviously wondering how he could stand there and just say what he did – saying he was innocent, and especially with the look on his face.”
She said she was glad to have the chance “finally to help with the case”, adding: “I could never have sat back and heard what was going on and done nothing”.
Amy said the incident happened in the early evening.
She told ITV News: “I was just walking through the lobby and up the main stairs and I was just about to turn the corner into the doorway that led to the staff rooms, and as I was walking up the stairs, I got to the top and I heard this voice behind me and it was him.
“And he started talking to me.
“And obviously if you work in a hotel you talk to the residents.
“And he then, as I went to go through to touch the door-handle, he pushed me up against the wall and he tried to force himself onto me, he grabbed hold of me and he started kissing me and then he tried to force himself on me.”
She went on: “I struggled, I tried to push him away and it was only the fact that there was someone walking along the corridor and the floors creaked that he stopped and I managed to get away.”
It would be 40 years before Amy reported what happened to her – but she felt the effects through the decades, saying it had made her “very cold towards people in general”.
She told ITV News: “I will never, ever forget that voice and that’s the part... over the years every time I’ve heard his voice on the television, on the radio, I just think ’How can you do it, how can you be like that, in full view of everyone after everything you’ve done?’.”
She said in her view, there was a “fair chance” colleagues of Hall knew about his assaults.
Amy now hopes that Hall will get a “truthful sentence” and be given “his just desserts”.
“He’s got to be shown that these things should not be going on and that in the future that men think twice before they do these things to women,” she said.
“It shouldn’t happen and he should get the strongest penalty that should be given out to him.”
