Abused girls can be to blame, suggests Eddy Shah

Former newspaper owner Eddy Shah has said underage girls who engage in consensual sex can be "to blame" for the abuse they experience.

Mr Shah told the BBC: "If we're talking about girls who just go out and have a good time, then they are to blame.

He added rape charges involving girls who "threw themselves" at celebrities could be a legal technicality.

But the National Association of People Abused in Childhood said rape was always a crime.

Mr Shah was recently cleared of raping a schoolgirl after telling a jury there had been no contact between them.

The 69-year-old founder of the newspaper Today, who lives in Chippenham, Wiltshire, was found not guilty at the Old Bailey last month of raping a girl at upmarket London hotels when she was between 12 and 15.

His comments to Radio 5 live presenter Stephen Nolan come after a prosecutor was suspended and a judge placed under investigation after it emerged a 13-year-old girl was labelled "predatory" and "sexually experienced" during a Snaresbrook Crown Court case where a man admitted abusing her.

Mr Shah also commented on Scotland Yard's Operation Yewtree investigation, set up in the wake of allegations of sexual abuse by BBC DJ Jimmy Savile and other television stars from the 1970s and 1980s.

Mr Shah said: "Rape was a technical thing - below a certain age. But these girls were going out with pop groups and becoming groupies and throwing themselves at them.

"Young girls and young men have always wanted a bit of excitement when they are young. They want to appear adult and do adult things."

'Witch-hunt'

When asked if he was implying that underage victims could themselves be at fault, he said: "If we're talking about girls who just go out and have a good time, then they are to blame.

"If we talk about people who go out and actually get 'raped' raped, then I feel no - and everything should be done against that."

He added that he had been helping a "very well-known person" charged under Operation Yewtree deal with the "horrible, horrible feeling" of "emptiness about everything", which Mr Shah said he had experienced when he was wrongly accused of rape.

Asked if he thought the investigation was in danger of becoming a witch-hunt, he said: "I think it's developing into that. It's easy policing and it's easy prosecutions. It's based on emotion most of it...

"In a civilised society there's got to be more checks and balances before these sort of accusations are used."

He also talked again about the suicidal thoughts he had experienced after his arrest.

"Every night I worked out different ways of committing suicide to help me go to sleep, actually," he said.

'Always a crime'

Mr Shah's comments were criticised by Pete Saunders, chief executive of the National Association of People Abused in Childhood.

Speaking to Radio 5 live, Mr Saunders said: "I'd like to meet with Eddie, and to have him explain to me, and maybe explain to some rape victims, what he means by 'raped raped', because my understanding is there is rape, or there is not rape, and rape is always a crime."

His views were echoed by Jim Gamble, the former chief executive of Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP).

Mr Gamble said: "At the end of the day, a child is a child, and the law is configured to protect a child, and there's an assumption made that adults, you know, will respect that, because they will want to protect children themselves."