Dave Lee Travis sentence ‘not unduly lenient’

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Parent Category: Africa and The World

Category: Law & Justice

Created on Tuesday, 21 October 2014 00:00

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Dave Lee Travis sentence ‘not unduly lenient’

Attorney general rules that DJ’s sentence for indecently assaulting researcher will not be referred to court of appeal

Press Association

Disgraced DJ Dave Lee Travis’s three-month suspended sentence for indecent assault will not be referred to the court of appeal, the attorney general has said.

Jeremy Wright QC found that the 69-year-old’s sentence for indecently assaulting a TV researcher on the Mrs Merton Show in 1995 was “neither wrong in principle nor unduly lenient”.

Travis, whose real name is David Griffin, was found guilty at London’s Southwark crown court and sentenced by Judge Anthony Leonard last month.

A spokesman for the attorney general’s office said: “The attorney general, Jeremy Wright QC MP, has decided not to refer the suspended prison sentence given to David Griffin to the court of appeal as he does not believe they would find it to be unduly lenient and increase it.

“The judge marked the seriousness of the offence by imposing a three-month sentence of imprisonment, the maximum under the guidelines being six months.

“It was neither wrong in principle nor unduly lenient to suspend that sentence.”

The case was considered for referral to the court of appeal after four members of the public contacted the attorney general’s office to complain about the sentence.

Travis’s trial heard that the former Top of the Pops presenter who became a household name in the 1970s got a “weird sexual thrill” when he indecently assaulted the woman, who is now a successful TV personality, in 1995.

He cornered her in the corridor of a BBC television studio where she was smoking, and commented on her “poor little lungs” before squeezing her breasts for 10 to 15 seconds.

Travis was found not guilty on a second indecent assault charge and the jury was discharged after it was unable to agree a verdict on a count of sexual assault.

He faced a retrial after jurors failed to reach verdicts on those two charges earlier this year. He was cleared of 12 counts of indecent assault at his original trial in February.

Travis, of Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, was first arrested in October 2012 under Operation Yewtree, Scotland Yard’s investigation into historical sexual abuse in the wake of allegations against the late DJ Jimmy Savile.

Source: The Guardian UK