This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Business News Media
Tim Westwood accused of sexually abusing fourteen year old girl
By Chris Cooke | Published on Thursday 14 July 2022
The BBC and The Guardian have published a series of new interviews accusing Tim Westwood of misconduct and abuse in relation to incidents that took place between 1990 and 2020.
The new interviews were initiated after ten women came forward in response to the BBC Three documentary about the former Radio 1 DJ which was aired earlier this year. The experiences of five of the DJ’s accusers are covered in a new programme that went live yesterday.
The original documentary aired in April and saw seven women make allegations of sexual misconduct against Westwood. Three of those women said that, after they agreed to meet with the DJ to discuss their careers in music, he had pressured them into sex. The other four claimed that he had groped them as they posed for photographs at events.
Among the new allegations, one woman – now in her 40s – says that Westwood sought a sexual relationship with her when she was just fourteen. She was a fan of the DJ, who at the time had a show on Capital Radio, and met him in 1990 at a London club night that he ran.
He was definitely aware of her age, because that had come up during a conversation at the club. After a couple of months of being in contact around the club night, Westwood invited the teenager to a West London flat where the sexual abuse began.
The woman recalls how, once in the flat, Westwood began kissing her. She says: “I was like, OK, I don’t have a problem with that. And then, it progressed from there. We had sex”. Obviously, aged fourteen, the teenager was unable to legally consent to any kind of sexual relationship.
Similar encounters then followed. “I kind of thought it was normal, but that’s because I didn’t understand the gravity of the situation”, she adds. “It wasn’t a relationship and it wasn’t about love, it was just a thing, and a thing you couldn’t discuss with anybody”.
The woman says that she broke off contact with Westwood when she was sixteen. She didn’t speak about the abuse at the time, she explains, because she felt that she would “get the blame, not him… because I’m no one”. However, with hindsight, she believes Westwood was a predator who groomed her for sex.
Another woman accusing Westwood of misconduct says that she was sixteen when she began a sexual relationship with the DJ, having met him at another club night he was involved in. He initially told her he was 27, but she later discovered he was actually in his 40s when the relationship took place.
Although the sex was technically consensual, she says “it didn’t feel like a healthy sexual relationship because he was a grown man and I was a teenager”. Moreover, during the eighteen months that she was in a relationship with the DJ, he sought to isolate her from friends and family, and to assert control over different aspects of her life.
“It was quite controlling in lots of ways”, she claims. “I had a home phone, and he demanded to have the password to it so he would often listen to my messages”. She was also obliged to join Westwood on his travels, she says, because he didn’t trust her to be on her own.
This particular victim says that she chose to come forward to talk about her experiences because of a statement previously put out by Westwood in response to rumours on social media, in which he said that he could “categorically” state that he had “never had an inappropriate relationship with anyone under the age of eighteen”.
Plus, she adds, she feels that Westwood would find it hard to deny that their relationship had occurred because plenty of people saw them together, including at the BBC.
“I’m probably one of the few girls that he couldn’t deny being with because there was quite a lot of witnesses”, she says, adding: “I wish more people had stepped in … the adults who were around him, the bodyguards, the secretaries, the people who I would say were bystanders”.
In addition to the investigation into Westwood’s past conduct by BBC News, management at the broadcaster are also looking into complaints made against the DJ. Despite initially saying that they were not aware of any formal complaints against Westwood that pre-dated the BBC Three documentary, BBC bosses recently admitted they had now found some old complaints.
The BBC management investigation is set to publish its findings within the next two weeks. Meanwhile, Capital Radio, where Westwood had shows before and after his nearly two decades at the BBC, are yet to comment on the allegations.
For his part, Westwood has denied all the claims made against him, with a representative earlier this year stating: “Tim Westwood strongly denies all allegations of inappropriate behaviour. In a career that has spanned 40 years, there have never been any complaints made against him officially or unofficially. Tim Westwood strongly rejects all allegations of wrongdoing”.
You can read about the latest claims made against the DJ here and watch the new programme on those allegations here.
