Ex-BBC staffer jailed for sexual assault

The 53-year-old Peter Rowell used his position as a DJ on a local radio station to groom and abuse impressionable young girls, British media reported.

The father-of-one, from Wickwar, South Gloucestershire, pleaded guilty at Bristol Crown Court to 12 counts of indecent assault following complaints from five women.

The assaults occurred between 1989 and the early 1990s when the women were all under 16 years old, the court heard.

Rowell also admitted six counts of making indecent photographs of children, which range from levels one to four – five being the most serious category.

He also pleaded guilty to the possession of 464 indecent images, found in his possession in January 2011.

Imposing the six-year jail term, Judge David Ticehurst told Rowell that he had a good career, a good income and a family but behind that he hid a “dark secret”.

“You had a life and lifestyle that would have been the envy of many – an apparently successful career in a glamorous and glittering world,” the judge said.

“Behind that public image you were a man that hid a dark secret. You were attracted to young girls, sexually abusing and exploiting for your own gratification.

“You were someone prepared to use the world of showbiz to attract young girls to you to abuse them.

“It is not the case of you involving yourself with a star-struck teenager on an isolated occasion and succumbing to temptation but a series of offences involving five separate girls over a period of five years.”

The judge said that the offences had occurred during the late 1980s and early 1990s when Rowell was in his mid-30s working as a DJ on GWR.

The judge placed Rowell on the sex offenders’ register for life and ordered that he be made the subject of an indefinite Sexual Offences Prevention Order banning contact with under 16s.

MOL/JR/HE

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