June 15, 2016
LONDON (AFP) - Two women have accused the late British broadcaster Clement Freud of abusing them as children in a television documentary due to be broadcast Wednesday.
Freud, who was a writer broadcaster, celebrity chef and member of parliament before he died in 2009, was accused of abuse that took place in the 1940s to 1970s.
One woman Sylvia Woosley told the ITV documentary "Exposure: Abused & Betrayed" that Freud had molested her from the age of 10 to 19.
"He had a certain power over me which I didn't understand and because it was something new, and it was a man, and I was desperate for a father's love," she told the documentary, according to ITV.
"It destroyed something in me that broke, and I suppose it's affected my behaviour all my life."
A second anonymous woman told ITV that Freud had groomed her as a teenager when he was a member of parliament, and raped her in her parents' home at the age of 18.
"I live in constant terror that I'll be found out, exposed. I've already suffered across nearly 40 years," she said.
Freud was the grandson of Sigmund Freud, the founding father of psychoanalysis, and the estranged brother of painter Lucian Freud. He was knighted in 1987.
His widow, Jill Freud, 89, released a statement in response to the programme.
"This is a very sad day for me. I was married to Clement for 58 years and loved him dearly," the statement read.
"I am shocked, deeply saddened and profoundly sorry for what has happened to these women."
Britain is still reeling from the discovery that television presenter Jimmy Savile was a prolific sexual abuser.
The revelation after his death prompted an outpouring of accusations of historical child abuse and a string of investigations.
ITV (isin = GB0033986497)
