Former child actor who accused ex-Chancellor Ken Clarke of sexual assault is cleared of perverting course of justice

 
Hearing: Ben Fellows and Ken Clarke (Pictures: PA)
PA
Paul Cheston30 July 2015
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The former child actor who accused ex Chancellor Ken Clarke of sexually assaulting him was dramatically cleared today at the Old Bailey of perverting the course of justice.

Ben Fellows, 40, claimed the Tory MP had plied him with alcohol and groped him in the office of a lobbyist while he was working undercover for ITV's Cook Report in 1994.

In 2012 the allegations were published in print and online and he made a statement to police from Operation Fairbank - the high profile investigation into Westminster historic child sex abuse.

It has since been suggested that Fellows may have confused the then-Chancellor with suspected paedophile Tory MP Peter Morrison, who died in 1995.

At the Old Bailey Mr Clarke described the allegations as “preposterous and off the Richter scale” and comparable to “Martians landing.”

Fellows, of Birmingham, insisted to jurors that he had told the truth and that when he had made it public he had feared for his life.

But he blamed the police for “pressurising” him into making a statement and claimed he had only been charged when he had publicised his allegations which made him ”a pain in the a***”.

Today the jury took nearly eight hours to find him not guilty and he was discharged from the dock by Mr Justice Simon.

During the trial the jury heard that Fellows had been 19 when he worked in a TV sting operation on Ian Greer, the political lobbyist at the heart of the cash-for-questions scandal.

He claimed that while in Greer's London office he was groped by Mr Clarke, who was then Chancellor of the Exchequer in the John Major government.

Roger Cook, who presented the programme and had some editorial control, told the court that at the time he had never heard of Fellows, or the Clarke allegations.

Asked if he had had any dealings with Fellows, he replied: "None whatsoever. He first came to my notice when the programme manager rang me up and said 'have you seen this blog?'.

"It was a blog from Mr Fellows claiming that he used to work for the Cook Report from 1990. I had never heard of him."

Fellows claimed the Cook Report staff were too afraid of losing their jobs or "falling foul of the establishment" to corroborate his account.

Mr Clarke told the court: “It is bizarre. I have never heard of Ben Fellows and as far as I know I have never met him and I cannot recollect ever meeting Ian Greer.

“Apparently when I was Chancellor I was hanging around the office of a PR firm and in front of people I groped a man. It’s rather like Martians landing!”

He insisted: “As Chancellor of the Exchequer and an MP you don’t have afternoons off, neither do you spend your entire time in meetings, you actually have to do some work.

“You don’t spend the day strolling around, going to meetings, then going for a walk in the park, you are working, it’s a 12 hour day if you are Chancellor.

Mr Clarke laughed at the suggestion, as he put it, that he had met people “I didn’t know existed” to talk “about a story I had nothing to do with” and groped a young man which “I have never had the compulsion to do in my entire life.”

Giving evidence in his defence, Fellows maintained that he had been groped by Mr Clarke in the office of lobbyist Mr Greer.

Asked by his counsel Bernard Richmond QC if he had any doubt about that, Fellows replied: "No."

Said Mr Richmond: "The jurors read your statement where you make an allegation about being touched firstly by Ken Clarke and secondly by Ian Greer. Did that happen or not?"

The defendant replied: "Yes, it did."

Asked how he felt about it afterwards, he said: "It was not upsetting at all. It was weird but not upsetting.

"To put this in context - this was no more than a minor groping you would get in a nightclub on a Saturday night."

Asked if he had anything personal against Mr Clarke, he said: "No, nothing whatsoever, apart from what happened in that office. I did not take it personally. I was part of the (TV) team."

However he said he was angry with the police whom he accused of pressurising him into making a statement.

When they said they were not following up the investigation Fellows said he and his wife were scared “for our family and our lives”.

“They (the police) said they could not go gallivanting off to Westminster and that made me furious.

“I felt these people were above the law and that Ken Clarke was above the law. My campaign was not directed at him at all it was directed at the police.”

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