CONTENT WARNING: This article discusses child sexual abuse.
Sex Education star Alexander Westwood has been found guilty of committing multiple sex offences.
The 24-year-old actor, who appeared as a student in Netflix’s hit series for 17 episodes, committed many of his acts during his drama classes. He raped one teenage actress and also made pupils perform Shakespeare while naked.
His sex offences started occurring when he was 10-years-old and he was convicted of 26 in total.
Jurors at Wolverhampton Crown Court heard that Westwood abused a boy and sexually abused another female multiple times.
In one instance, he used an iPad to film an aspiring actress while she was naked. When she missed lessons after the sexual abuse, he attempted to charge her family $35,000 for her absences.
Westwood was said to have a “fascination” with pornography and wielded his star power over victims. In one case, he sexually abused a girl for seven years and she was forced to drink his urine.
Prosecuting counsel Andrew Wallace called Westwood a “supreme manipulator”.
“All these charges have a common theme, of inappropriate touching and predatory behaviour,” he said. “The 10 indictments concerning a girl, the first charge is on the date of his 10th birthday, that is the date because there is not criminality before this age.”
“If we were to list every instance there would be hundreds of charges.”
The court was told a victim was “forced to act out the most inappropriate scenes”, and that his sexual offending “became a lifestyle”.
“Then when giving acting lessons, he again used this as an opportunity to touch his pupils inappropriately. These are schoolgirls we are talking about, teenagers,” Wallace added.
“Imagine asking Dame Judy Dench to recite Hamlet naked, she would tell you where to go.”
One victim ended up crying on the stand as she recounted her experience.
“He would ask me for sex and when I said no would carry on. I would tell him I did not want to because I was not happy, but he would just ignore me,” she said.
“He would get angry and throw things. He would regularly pin me down by my wrists so I could not move. I would have to bite him to get him off me. He would lie, lie and lie. He told my mother I needed to be in a psychiatric hospital.”
Westwood now awaits sentencing which will take place in February.
Help is available.
- If you require immediate assistance, please call 000.
- If you’d like to speak to someone about sexual violence, please call the 1800 Respect hotline on 1800 737 732 or chat online.
- Under 25? You can reach Kids Helpline at 1800 55 1800 or chat online.
Lead image: Instagram @alexander.westwood
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