Coronation Street star Michael Le Vell talks of weight off his shoulders as jury finds him not guilty of child rape

Star 'delighted' after he's cleared on 12 charges
Paul Cheston11 September 2013

Coronation Street actor Michael Le Vell was today cleared of child rape charges and freed to resume his TV career.

The jury at Manchester Crown Court found him not guilty of a catalogue of sexual abuse of a girl from the age of six.

Le Vell had been suspended by the TV show from his part playing garage mechanic Kevin Webster since he was charged in February.

Had he been convicted he would have faced a long prison sentence and the end of his acting career.

A spokeswoman for Coronation Street said: "We are looking forward to meeting with Michael to discuss his return to the programme," after the verdicts were returned.

Speaking outside court, the actor, 48, said he was "delighted" and it was a "weight off his shoulders."

After deliberating over two days, jurors found him not guilty of five counts of rape, three of indecent assault and two each of sexual activity with a child and causing a child to engage in such activity.

In his summing up Judge Michael Henshell told the jurors they had to decide whether the alleged victim was telling the truth or whether she had set out to destroy the actor’s life.

Le Vell, charged under his real name, Michael Turner, had strenuously denied all the allegations and through his lawyers accused the girl of wickedly inventing them.

He admitted he had been a heavy drinker and had “dark secrets” but insisted this was not the shame of abuse but marital infidelity, including a fling while his wife was being treated for cancer.

His barrister, Alisdair Williamson, described him as “drunk and weak but no child rapist”.

Giving evidence, the girl, who is now a teenager, had repeatedly burst into tears as she described a series of attacks.

She said the rapes had occurred in the early hours of the morning after the actor had been drinking heavily.

During one rape she claimed he had prevented her from speaking by putting one of her favourite teddy bears over her mouth “so I could still breathe but not say anything”.

She claimed after some of the attacks she would “start crying with my teddy bears and tell them what had happened”.

The girl did not tell her mother about the allegations until 2011 when mother and daughter were attending a conference in London.

Prosecutor Eleanor Laws QC described the victim as courageous and denied she had invented lies.

“She is not hell bent on his [Le Vell’s] downfall. He said: ‘I don’t know why she is saying it’ because it is the uncomfortable truth,” she told, the court.

“No one likes to think that someone they liked or admired has done something like this. [Le Vell] has been in a very popular soap opera for a number of years. You don’t know him but you do know this girl says he sexually abused her.”

But Mr Williamson told the jury the girl had made up “silly” and “ridiculous” details which meant her story “did not add up”.

“You are going to throw a man’s life away? You are going to cast him to the outer darkness of being a child rapist?

“Where is the consistency, the solidity of evidence on which you are going to be sure? It’s simply not there.”

Le Vell was first accused in September 2011 but four months later the Crown Prosecution Service dropped the case on the grounds of insufficient evidence.

This decision was reversed after a case review and he was arrested at his home in Hale, Cheshire.

Le Vell, who has been a regular in Coronation Street since 1983, once described his part as “the best job in television”.

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