http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23716575#TWEET857129

The list of people who haven't been up to no good is getting shorter by the day.

Not looking good for him, is it?

So it will so get to the point where celebrities retire and get arrested. Is that all they have to look forward to? A knock on the door from plod?

I would love to know what evidence they can possibly have after all this time!

This... also, why it has taken so long to come to light, and how much of these are just cash-ins?

In the case of girls who are under age they cannot legally give consent so simply proving that they had sex is enough to convict. With the older women it might be cashing in.

Ok, so what I want to know is how can they prove that they
a) have had sex (unless they have photos of actually being in the act...unlikely)
2) had that sex with DLT and
iii) had that sex with DLT while they were under age, since they aren't any more?

They would have to give a date, at which they were underage, and then possibly give other details like birthmarks or moles in parts of the body not normally seen. Then this could be corroborated with the stars or public calendars to prove that they were in the area. If not then it becomes harder. In some of these dates the men might have been doing the Radio One Roadshow so they could be identified as being in a certain town on a set date. It still might not be enough. In the end it might simply be who is a more credible witness?

That's a pretty specious and clumsy way to wreck someone's reputation, but then I said this at the time that everyone had convicted Jimmy Saville on the basis of no evidence, nothing was ever actually proved and all that happened was that the foundation got hit for compensation payouts instead of the work it was intended to do. I wonder how these people sleep at night!

I have no idea of how they confirmed it. I think that the police are in overdrive mode to make up for past failures. I would have no idea whether he committed the offences. I do suspect that the women had consented at the time and only once the investigation started they came out of the woodwork thinking of the money involved.

The whole problem with sexual offenses is it's virtually impossible to prove consent (or more importantly, the lack of it) without some evidence of physical coercion. However the law is clear : People under 16 are not considered legally able to give sexual consent - the fact under 16's en masse do have sex is something they try not to think about. Basically, if you have sex with someone who is under 16 at the time, it's considered coercive by default. That's a flat rule.

So it won't be a case of of whether it was forced, it will simply be a case of whether they actually did have sex or not. Which, frankly, 30 years down the line? Good luck with that. You'll need some form of corroborating evidence to get a conviction. As much as rape/sexual abuse is a nasty, violent crime I would dearly wish to get rid of entirely, you can't convict someone of it simply on the word of one person. That's just not acceptable justice, it's barely a step above how things happened at the witch trials.

Yes the underage cases will be easier than the rest. The other cases are different and could have been consensual at the time and people can be manipulated to think that they did not give consent. It is very difficult to decide what actually happened. Though to trash someones reputation because the police are looking for witnesses does seem excessive.