DJ Dave Lee Travis convicted of indecent assault

Ex-Top of the Pops presenter cleared on a second charge of the same offence

British DJ Dave Lee Travis has been convicted of indecent assault by a jury at London’s Southwark Crown Court.

The ex-Top of the Pops presenter was cleared on a second charge of the same offence.

The jury were unable to agree a verdict on another charge of sexual assault and were discharged.

Travis (69) who became a household name in the 1970s, had faced a retrial after jurors failed to reach verdicts on two of the charges earlier this year.

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Wearing dark grey trousers and a light grey blazer, Travis stared straight ahead with a stony expression and held his hands in front of him as the verdicts were read out.

He glanced over his shoulder to his wife Marianne, who sat at the back of court, before sitting down.

The jury of six men and six women came to their verdicts after 19 hours and 15 minutes.

Prosecutor Teresa Hay told the court that the Crown would not be seeking a retrial on the count of sexual assault which the jury was hung on, and a formal verdict of not guilty was entered.

The forewoman told the court the jury had found Travis guilty of a single count of indecent assault by a majority of 10 to two.

Judge Anthony Leonard QC warned the former radio star that he was looking at “all options” when he considered his sentence.

Sophie Wood, defending, told the judge they would be asking for Travis to be given a non custodial community order sentence.

She said: “It is the defence position that we will seek to persuade your honour that this is a community order penalty. That is where we submit it fits. It’s the defence position that a pre-sentence report would assist.”

Judge Leonard said “all options remain open”, including jail.

Travis left the courtroom accompanied by his wife Marianne, who put a protective arm around her husband’s back as he left.

He declined to comment on the verdict, saying: “I’m not speaking to anybody right this moment.”

Travis, from Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, was convicted of groping a female television personality working on the Mrs Merton Show on January 17th, 1995.

Prosecutors claimed Travis approached the woman - then working as part of the production crew - as she stood smoking in the corridor and put his hands on her chest for at least 10-15 seconds until she ran away.

She spoke to police about the allegation following Travis’s first indecent assault trial earlier this year.

He was cleared of 12 counts of indecent assault at his original trial in February.

He faced a retrial on two counts, one of indecent assault of a woman between November 1st 1990 and January 31st 1991, and another of sexual assault on a different woman between June 1st 2008 and November 30th 2008, on which a jury was unable to reach verdicts at the earlier trial.

He also denied the additional count of indecent assault, but he was convicted over this charge today.

Travis was first arrested in October 2012 under Operation Yewtree, Scotland Yard’s investigation into historic sexual abuse in the wake of allegations against the late DJ Jimmy Savile.

During the trial, prosecutors claimed Travis was an “opportunist” who acted as if he had the “perfect right” to grope young women.

The allegations against him dated back to the 1990s when he was starring in panto, while the most recent was said to have happened during an interview with a journalist at his home in 2008.

A woman claimed she was assaulted by Travis while they worked together on a production of Aladdin.

The woman, who was in her 20s at the time, claimed the DJ, who was playing the role of evil uncle Abanazar, assaulted her while they were alone in his dressing room, holding the door closed as he put his hand inside her trousers.

She claimed the assault was stopped only when Travis’s co-stars, comedy act the Chuckle brothers, walked past and one said: “All right Dave?”

Meanwhile, a female journalist alleged Travis assaulted her in his home following an interview in 2008, claiming he touched her chest and held his hands there for several seconds.

The court also heard from two other woman, a foreign journalist and a woman who served Travis drinks in the Isle of Man in the 1980s, who also claimed they were groped by Travis but were not complainants in the trial.

Giving his own evidence, the veteran DJ denied the claims, telling jurors the women had been lying.

He also called on a host of other defence witnesses, which heard him described as the “perfect gentleman” rather than a sexual predator.

Travis came to personify BBC Radio 1 in its heyday when it pulled in massive audiences and its DJs were almost as famous as the artists whose records they played.

Travis - real name David Patrick Griffin - learned his trade in clubs and on pirate radio as well as a stint touring the United States with Herman’s Hermits before joining the BBC in the late 1960s.

Dubbed the Hairy Cornflake as a result of the hirsute presenter's stint on the Radio 1 breakfast show, he was a fixture on the station for more than two decades and a regular on Top Of The Pops.