Bill Roache trial judge tells jury to check over the Corrie star’s claims to police
THE judge in the trial of Coronation Street actor Bill Roache told the jury yesterday they will retire to consider their verdicts today.
Mr Justice Holrode said that soon it would be the jury’s turn to decide the outcome of the four-week case.
He reassured the eight women and four men they could take “as much time” as they need to reach “true verdicts according to the evidence”.
He also urged them to re-read a statement Roache, 81, made to police after his second arrest in June last year, stressing that “its contents are important”.
In the prepared statement, he told officers: “I am a decent and caring person who has always respected the rights of other people.
“I would never dream of forcing myself sexually on another person.
“It is correct to say I have been in a position where women have indicated a desire to have sex with me.
“I do enjoy having sex with women and I have taken the opportunity to have sex with many women. This has always been with their full and unconditional consent.
“I enjoy having sex with mature women. I would not seek out young girls from the age range alleged against me. Girls of that age hold no interest of a sexual nature at all.”
Roache, who has played Ken Barlow in the ITV soap since the first episode in 1960, is accused of being “sexually reckless and plainly opportunistic” from 1965 to 1972.
The father-of-five, of Wilmslow, Cheshire, is alleged to have sexually assaulted 14-year-old Girl A in 1965 in the gents toilets at Granada Studios, and groped Girl B when she was 16 in a ladies loo the same year.
Girl C claims she was 15 when Roache twice raped her in two different houses he owned in Haslingden, Lancs, in 1967.
Two autograph-hunting sisters, Girls D and E, say they were under 16 when he groped one in his dressing room and later forced the younger sister to perform a sex act in his car.
Roache denies all the charges. The trial continues.