Clifford ‘lunged at girl after promise of meeting stars’
The woman, who cannot be named, said she feared she was going to be raped when Clifford insisted on giving her a lift home after he met her at a Wimpy bar in south-west London, and then pinned her down in the passenger seat of his car.
Clifford is accused of indecently assaulting her in 1966 when she was 14 and he was in his early 20s, jurors at Southwark Crown Court were told. She said that, after offering her a lift home, he drove her to an alleyway near a sports field, saying he had something to show her. The court heard he produced a book of photographs of him with celebrities including the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, and she said she would like to meet the Walker Brothers.
The woman said: “He said ’I can arrange that, but this is what you’ve got to do’, and he put my seat right back and then he tried for force himself upon me, basically.
“My seat, I think it went almost horizontal, that’s the way it seemed, he then sort of lunged at me and put his body on me. He was touching me all over.”
Clifford, wearing a navy jacket, white shirt and striped tie with grey trousers, listened through a hearing loop from the dock.
The woman said: “I was sort of on autopilot, ‘How I can get away from here’, and it was quite obvious what he wanted to do. I thought at the time I was going to get raped if I didn’t get out of the car, I was just thinking about escape.”
She told the court she managed to open the car door and wriggle free, and ran home. The woman said she felt “lucky” to have got away, and had feared for her safety as soon as Clifford started driving in the opposite direction to her home.
The jury heard she had told friends about what happened over the years, but did not go to the police until recently.
“As he became more of a household name and people would mention him or he was on the television, I’d say I had a really bad experience with him before he was really famous.”
Clifford, 70, from Hersham in Surrey, is accused of a total of 11 counts of indecent assault against seven women and girls.
He denies all the charges.
The trial continues.
