'Sexual contact' with fan, 15, 'never happened', DJ Neil Fox tells court

Updated

DJ Neil Fox flatly rejected allegations he had various sexual contacts with a 15-year-old fan during a tense cross-examination in the final week of his sexual assault trial.

Fox, 54, of Fulham, south-west London, denies eight counts of indecent assault and two counts of sexual assault between 1988 and 2014.

The DJ, who was arrested minutes after coming off air at Magic FM in September last year, took to the witness box of Westminster Magistrates' Court today.

He rebuffed allegations from a woman who claimed the pair had a relationship which included inappropriate touching during a private tour of Capital Radio's record library, sexual encounters at his flat and kissing her in the radio station's car park.

The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, alleged that in the library he undid his jeans, put his hand down her underpants and guided her while she touched his erection.

Under questioning from his defence counsel Jonathan Caplan QC, Fox said: "It never happened."

Later under cross examination by John Price QC, Fox conceded he "could have easily taken her for a tour".

He said: "I have no idea if I ever went into the library with (her), I don't believe I did."

Fox agreed it would be "quite wrong" for an adult man to stick his tongue into the mouth of a teenage girl, as the woman alleged he had done in the station's car park on another occasion.

The complainant also alleged the pair had sexual contact at his flat and recalled how he had an object that resembled an American football on his bed.

Fox earlier told the court the girl was "a little bit obsessed" with him.

He said if she had seen such an item it would have been because the bed was visible from the hallway.

Mr Price pressed Fox on a letter the woman wrote to a friend in 1989 in which she described helping him with a bandage on his ear after he had surgery.

She wrote: "I saw him and he didn't have the bandage on. He doesn't wear it in the house."

She added: "I helped him put it on before going out."

But Fox said an article about his operation had appeared in a newspaper around the same time.

Mr Price said, while the letter made no mention of sexual activity, it spoke of a "close familiarity" between the pair.

Fox replied: "Well, she didn't have to know an awful lot about me to look in a national newspaper and see that I'd had an operation."

He suggested the girl was merely playing out a fantasy about the pair - a theory Mr Price dismissed as "palpable nonsense".

Mr Price put it to Fox that the complainant "fancied him" and he knew it. She made it clear that she was available for him to exploit, he said.

Fox replied: "She didn't make it clear to me."

When asked about an ex-colleague's allegations he put his hands on her breasts, Fox said: "I do not remember the incident at all."

He said there was room for the woman to mistake his action of hugging her.

Regarding another occasion where he allegedly simulated having sex with a female colleague from behind, Fox insisted such actions took place commonly around the office as a "play-acting hijinks thing".

Mr Price said: "Are you saying that there will have been occasions where you will have bent female members of staff over a desk and simulated having intercourse with them?"

Fox told the court he had seen it "many times" and said, when out of context, the "Benny Hill-style" comedy could have seemed inappropriate.

Mr Price said: "She says that when you did that to her, she did not consent to it. Are you in a position to dispute that?"

Fox replied: "I can't get in (her) head."

Mr Price asked: "Did you ask her before you did it if it was okay?"

Fox replied: "No"

But the woman seemed open to "hijinks", Fox added.

Mr Price accused the DJ of being a "sexual bully", to which he replied: "No, I wasn't."

He added: "I really wanted to get along with (her)."

Mr Price challenged Fox to provide an explanation as to why three different people who did not know each other were accusing him of similarly inappropriate conduct.

He replied: "I don't have an explanation at all."

Mr Price continued: "There are two aren't there; either because it's true, or these three young women ... have coincidentally accused you of doing exactly the same thing to each of them."

Fox replied: "Correct."

Mr Price said: "Coincidence is ridiculous, isn't it, as an explanation for these things?"

Fox replied: "I can't explain those coincidences."

Mr Price said: "Well you could, if you had the courage to admit you'd done it."

Fox insisted he had not committed the alleged offences.

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