Attorney General to investigate if sentence ‘too lenient’ after veteran BBC broadcaster Stuart Hall gets 15 months for indecently assaulting 13 girls, Sexual Trafficking

Attorney General to investigate if sentence ‘too lenient’ after veteran BBC broadcaster Stuart Hall gets 15 months for indecently assaulting 13 girls

Hall had claimed his victims were lying as part of ‘vendetta against people in public eye’
Paul Bignell Author Biography, James Legge
Monday 17 June 2013

The Attorney General is to examine whether disgraced former BBC broadcaster Stuart Hall’s 15-month sentence for indecent assault was “unduly lenient”, as politicians and charities said it should be extended.

The 83-year-old former BBC sports presenter was sent to jail on Monday after admitting a series of indecent assaults on girls as young as nine, but may only serve half of his sentence.

Despite initially telling police his victims were all lying as part of a “vendetta going on against people in the public eye,” the former It’s a Knockout host admitted his guilt at Preston Crown Court in April and was jailed on 14 counts of indecent assault.

But MPs and campaigners last night reacted with anger at what they felt was a light sentence. A series of complaints prompted the Attorney General, Dominic Grieve, to examine the sentencing and whether it might be referred to the Court of Appeal….
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/attorney-general-to-investigate-if-sentence-too-lenient-after-veteran-bbc-broadcaster-stuart-hall-gets-15-months-for-indecently-assaulting-13-girls-8661738.html

An insult to all his victims: Sex predator Stuart Hall will serve just TWO WEEKS in jail for every one of the 13 girls he attacked

Hall jailed for 15 months after admitting 14 counts of indecent assault
But court heard he first told police allegations were part of a ‘vendetta’
Former It’s A Knockout presenter, 83, was at Preston Crown Court
Attorney General’s office has received complaints about sentence length
By Stephen Wright and Nazia Parveen  17 June 2013

Stuart Hall will serve barely two weeks in prison for each of the young girls he sexually abused.

The sentence prompted a wave of outrage and fury last night, with victims saying it made a mockery of their horrific ordeal and politicians and campaigners condemning it as ‘incredibly lenient’.

The disgraced It’s A Knockout presenter, 83, was jailed for 15 months yesterday after admitting that he indecently assaulted 13 girls between 1967 and 1986. His youngest victim was nine.

Under sentencing rules Hall will be released automatically after serving just half the term.

The Attorney General has already been forced to agree to review the sentence after being inundated with complaints….
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2343061/Stuart-Hall-Former-BBC-star-jailed-15-months-sexually-abusing-girls-young-nine.html

Theater Review
Sexual Trafficking, Up Close and Personal
‘Roadkill’ Bears Witness to Human Trafficking

By BEN BRANTLEY June 16, 2013

The girl on the bus had been promised summer and sunshine, she says, and it is cool and clammy on this wet evening in June. But Mary, 14 years old and fresh from Nigeria, is willing to forgive this new, exciting city its disappointing weather. If she has any suspicion that what awaits at the end of her journey will be beyond forgiveness, she does not betray it.

Thus began the performance I attended of “Roadkill,” the unsettling site-specific theater piece about sex trafficking created by Cora Bissett, first seen three years ago at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and brought to New York by St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn. The audience members, who numbered about 20, had boarded the same bus as Mary outside the Warehouse’s theater….
http://theater.nytimes.com/2013/06/17/theater/reviews/roadkill-bears-witness-to-human-trafficking.html