Archive August 27, 2025

John Alford, a London actor, is accused of sexual assault and assault by penetration on two counts, including one involving a 14-year-old girl and two more involving a 15-year-old.

A 15-year-old girl claimed that she “felt absolutely sick” and that she had an affair after being sexually assaulted by former London Burning actor John Alford. The 53-year-old is accused of sexual assault and assault by penetration on April 9th, 2022, along with four counts of sexual activity committed with a 14-year-old girl and two additional counts involving a 15-year-old.

After a night out with friends at a pub, the defendant, who is alleged to be John Shannon, is accused of sexually assaulting both girls while both girls are intoxicated. A third girl, who was close to the alleged victims, is said to have committed all of the crimes.

The 15-year-old girl’s police interview, which was conducted three days after the alleged incidents occurred, was captured on video for the jurors in his trial at St Albans Crown Court on Wednesday.

Former Grange Hill actor Alford previously testified to the court that he left the property for a short while before returning with a bottle of vodka, cigarettes, and food.

The girl claimed that the defendant had purchased the alcohol for them without knowing that he had done so. Alford and the other girl continued to enter and leave the room as soon as they began to become extremely inebriated, she said.

The 14-year-old girl was alleged to have had sexual relations with Alford in the home’s garden and a downstairs toilet. When asked about her own alleged incident, which she claimed occurred at around 8am, the 15-year-old girl responded, “We were all just like dozing off. When did John begin to touch me at that point?

The girl responded, “Sick. I was utterly ill. I wouldn’t say that to anyone.

She claimed that she went to the bathroom the day after being dropped off at the other complainant’s because she was “stressing out” before the girls “spoke about everything that happened” and left right away.

The girls’ previous statements to the court regarding the alleged assaults were due to their drinking “a fair amount of vodka.”

The complainant said she decided to speak out about the incidents whilst visiting a different friend’s home on April 11. “I had a mental breakdown to my best mate’s mum in the garden, and she called my mum,” she said. “(I was) crying, screaming, very sad.”

The girl responded, “He came across really nice (and) friendly” when asked how Alford was acting on the night of the incident. He had no sexual orientation whatsoever.

He was simply overly kind and warm. He merely desired to be a child. The younger alleged victim, who is now 18 years old, was teary-eyed as she testified on Wednesday in front of a busy public gallery.

She claimed to the jurors that she and the second alleged victim were close friends and that they had invited a third girl their age to her Hertfordshire home to spend the evening together and planned to spend the night.

The woman claimed that the second incident in the downstairs bathroom lasted five minutes while the first one between Alford and the woman allegedly occurred in the garden for no longer than ten minutes.

The witness responded, “I disagree,” when Houzla Rawat, a defender for Alford, claimed that she was being “physically friendly” toward the defendant throughout the evening.

The alleged victim also refrained from following Alford into the garden after smoking a cigar. When asked by prosecutor Julie Whitby why she listened to Alford’s comments in the bathroom and garden when she was not interested in speaking with him, the witness responded, “Most children, if an adult is telling you to do something, you’ll do it… especially if you’re drunk or impaired. “

One of the two girls “keeps on trying to kiss me,” Alford claimed in a statement to the police, and she had informed him that she was 17 years old. He continued, “No point did I touch her in any sexual way.”

According to Alford, the two alleged victims were “trying to extort money from him and they were trying to trick him,” but no evidence was found on either the girls’ or the defendant’s phones during a search, according to the court.

All the charges against Alford, a resident of Holloway, north London, are disputed.

The trial is advancing.

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