1970s sex abuse victims must share blame says Irons: Those Top of the Pops girls were 'goers', actor claims



The star sympathised with high-profile figures accused of sexual abuse

The married father-of-two also claimed people were 'goers' in the 1970s



He has faced controversy before for his opinions on sexual issues



Jeremy Irons, pictured in London in May, has sparked controversy again by expressing sympathy for high-profile figures accused of sexual offences

Jeremy Irons has suggested women who claim they were sexually assaulted by TV stars in the 1970s were partly responsible for the attacks.



The Brideshead Revisited actor expressed sympathy for high-profile figures accused of sex offences in the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal and described the alleged crimes as ‘relatively innocuous’.

He said the situation could be explained by the fact that people in the 70s were ‘goers’, adding: ‘I mean look at Top of the Pops. What were those girls doing there? What did they want, the lot of them, when they hung around the caravans and trailers afterwards? There was a sort of sexual freedom. To have all that dragged up for something relatively innocuous – that’s tough.



'They seem to be in a mood to pillory anybody.’



It is now known that Savile used his position as a Top of the Pops presenter to abuse young girls.

One woman, who said she was assaulted by Savile at a recording of the programme in 1973 when she was 15, said Savile put his hand over her bottom and when she objected he replied: ‘I thought that’s what you came here for.’

Irons, who played paedophile Humbert Humbert in the 1997 film adaptation of Lolita, also said he feels ‘incredibly sorry’ for the ‘television guy on Coronation Street’ – an apparent reference to Bill Roache who denies charges of rape and indecent assault.

In an interview with the Sunday Times, Irons, 64, said: ‘There is a blanket term for child abuse, and if the worst thing you have done was put your hand on someone’s thigh under their skirt, that may be sexual abuse but’... He then said such behaviour was not as bad as, for example, a serious sexual assault against a nine-year-old boy.



Mr Irons said he felt 'incredibly sorry for people like the television guy on Coronation Street' - in an apparent reference to Bill Roache, pictured outside Preston Magistrates Court last month, who denies the charges

The Oscar-winning actor said Savile’s behaviour ‘sounds appalling’ but ‘one hears that sexual abuse mostly happens within families’. Speaking of Operation Yewtree – the police inquiry into allegations against Savile and others – he said he hadn’t seen it ‘getting many mothers or fathers’.

Last night victims of Savile said focusing on Top of the Pops risked trivialising his predatory behaviour.

Kim Anderson, 53, was assaulted by Savile when she was a 19-year-old waitress working in a restaurant that many of the DJs and stars of the 1970s frequented.

The scandal surrounding the late Jimmy Savile, pictured, prompted a police inquiry called 'Operation Yewtree'

She said: ‘To suggest girls in the audience of Top of the Pops somehow deserved to become victims is wrong. Jimmy Savile was a predatory paedophile.

‘It doesn’t help when people like Jeremy Irons say things that take what happened out of context.’

Caroline Moore, 53, was abused by Savile at the age of 13 as she recovered at Stoke Mandeville hospital in 1971.

Mr Irons enraged feminists two years ago by saying women should accept pats on the bottom in good humour