Teenager ‘had therapy after Max Clifford abused her’
A 15-year-old girl was forced to seek therapy to get over her obsession with Max Clifford after he “sexually abused” her, a court hears.
The PR guru is accused of repeatedly abusing the woman in his car in 1977 when she was 15.
He is said to have used the name of an Oscar-winning actress to try to sleep with her.
The woman told jurors at Southwark crown court: “He asked me which actors I liked. I said Julie Christie.
“He said that he was her agent and he said he talked regularly to her and mentioned her on several occasions.
“I remember him saying to me he had spoken to Julie Christie and – because this had happened to her as well, by that presumably he meant the abuse that he was doing to me – she said he should take my virginity because it would be my first and then I would fall in love with him and be 100 per cent loyal to him.”
‘Obsessed’
The woman broke down in tears in the witness box as she was accused of being “obsessed” about Mr Clifford.
Richard Horwell QC, defending, questioned her about research she had carried out on the internet.
He asked: “During the period in which you were having counselling, did you become almost obsessed with Mr Clifford?”
She replied: “I was very frightened and I was worried he would find out about me.”
The woman said she met Mr Clifford in 1977 while on holiday with her family in Torremolinos, Spain. She claims he impressed her parents and told them he could find her modelling work.
A psychotherapist told the court that she treated the alleged victim in 2011.
“She said she was sexually abused,” the court heard. “She didn’t give precise details of the abuse but it was too horrific for her.”
The counsellor said her client looked like “she might vomit” before naming Mr Clifford as her abuser.
In cross-examination, it emerged that the psychotherapist had written in one of her post-session notes that “she (her client) feels she’s becoming obsessed by this”.
The woman also spoke about a sighting of Mr Clifford in Raynes Park, south London, which she mentioned in an anonymous letter she sent to him.
She told the court that she stopped behind the defendant at traffic lights in around 1998.
“He had a personalised number plate and I could see the back of his head,” she said.
In the letter, she wrote: “What to do? Wanting to get out of the car, confront you, let you know that I still remember, wanting everyone to know the real disgusting creature that you are.”
Prosecutor Rosina Cottage QC asked the woman: “Is it true what you have told this jury?”
She replied: “Absolutely true.”
Another friend of the alleged victim told the court that the woman became irritated when Mr Clifford commented on the murder of schoolgirl Milly Dowler in July 2011.
She said: “(She) was getting increasingly frustrated because of the hypocrisy of the things he was saying in the media, talking about the Milly Dowler case, ‘How could paedophiles do that to a 14-year-old girl?”‘
Mr Clifford, 70, is accused of 11 counts of indecent assault against seven women and girls. He denies all the charges.