Alleged victim claims Freddie Starr had ‘wandering hands’

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Starr had ‘wandering hands’ - victim

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Freddie Starr (Reuters)

Freddie Starr (Reuters)

By Europe Correspondent Melissa Davies

Freddie Starr is the latest celebrity to be arrested in connection with the Jimmy Savile sex abuse scandal.

Starr was arrested in London after allegations he molested girls in Savile's dressing room.

Soon after police arrested Starr and took him from his home, his property was filled with forensic investigators and detectives.

They want to question him about claims he groped Karin Ward in Jimmy Savile's BBC dressing room when she was 14.

“I was horribly, horribly humiliated by Freddie Starr who had a very bad attack of wandering hands and who groped me. I didn't like him because he smelled like my stepfather and it freaked me out and I didn't like it and I rebuffed him,” says Ms Ward.

When the allegation first emerged a few weeks ago, Starr and his 34-year-old fiancée spoke with reporters. He denies any involvement in the abuse.

“I never have done, I never would do. It's not in my nature to do that,” says Starr.

“If there's one thing I hate it's paedophiles and to be accused is devastating. I've got to fight back.”

At first Starr claimed he'd never met Karin Ward but had to backtrack when footage was broadcast showing him on Savile's show with Ward in the background.

Another 1970s clip is damning for Savile - Sylvia Edwards says he molested her on live TV

"I just felt his hand go under there and I sort of jumped up, but I went to go back down again but I couldn't go anywhere and suddenly his hand was still there, so I was trying to push it away and he wouldn't go,” says Edwards. “But I started feeling embarrassed because where can you go? I had all these people in front of me and I couldn't get down these steps, so I had to just stay there and I was just trying to push him and I was just getting really flustered."

Savile's $8.5 million estate has been frozen, a sign police are getting ready for compensation claims, something that has the support of Savile's family. 

"The genuine people out of this who have been raped or sexually abused obviously you'd like to see them get something, you know, because they've had to live with this all their lives,” says Savile’s nephew Guy Marsden.

No charges have yet been laid against Gary Glitter or Freddie Starr, and with up to 400 potential Savile victims to interview the investigation could take months. 

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Comments

1/01/2013 4:21:38 p.m.

myrtle howard wrote:

Saville, Starr and some of their colleagues of 40 years ago were so sexually and emotionally immature they did not even understand they were acting in a disgusting, illegal and immoral manner. They still don't. Their's is the evil of egotism...acute selfishness, creating cruelty and pain to others. Minor sociopaths, yet evil nonetheless. 'Swinging' sixties and seventies? In yer dreams...they were years of male impotence and continuing repression for many boys and girls in the UK and elsewhere. The extent and amount of male sexual abuse and female passivity in the pop-star/groupie scene in the UK of that time has yet to be documented. 'Wandering hands'? What kind of defensive passivity is this female victim of male sexual power trying to create? Isn't it time we UK women sought some decisive remedies ... like cutting of Mr Starr's hands at the wrists?

4/11/2012 5:22:53 p.m.

scott wrote:

scotland yard don't have far to go to find the dirt on this spade.. his fiancee looks more like one of his victims

4/11/2012 12:27:22 a.m.

John wrote:

This kind of behaviour is definitely inappropriate. But what about age difference? How old was the victim and how old was the alleged offender? Just because he is an old man now, does not mean he did alleged things yesterday. How old were they?