Australian actress found guilty of child sex offences
August 20, 2015 04:00 pm
Maggie Kirkpatrick, a veteran Australian television star who appeared in Home and Away and Prisoner Cell Block H, has been found guilty of sexually assaulting a teenage girl in the 1980s.
A court heard that Kirkpatrick, 74, assaulted a 14-year-old fan at the actress’s home in Melbourne after a woman who worked with Kirkpatrick arranged the meeting.
The girl, who was not named, was in a psychiatric hospital at the time for substance abuse and a personality disorder. Kirkpatrick collected the girl from the hospital and they shared a meal before the assault occurred in the actress’s bedroom.
The court heard the victim did not report the crimes until 2013 because she thought she would be accused of being “crazy”.
Kirkpatrick denied the charges but the Melbourne Magistrates Court found the victim was a “witness of truth”.
The actress was found guilty of two counts of indecent assault and one charge of gross indecency with a person under 16. She has not yet been sentenced but is not expected to be given a prison term.
Kirkpatrick came to prominence in the 1980s on the Australian television show Prisoner Cell Block H, in which she played Joan Ferguson, a lesbian warden nicknamed “The Freak”.
She appeared in 1991 as Jean Chambers in Home and Away and then featured again in the show in 2003 and 2004 as Viv “The Guv” Standish.
The case follows the imprisonment of other veteran Australian entertainers on child sex offences, including Rolf Harris and Robert Hughes, the star of the sitcom Hey Dad..!
Source: The Guardian
