Defence QC quizzes 'victim'

The woman accusing actor Chris Langham of abusing her from the age of 14 was labelled a fantasist who was telling ‘a pack of lies’ in court yesterday.

The alleged victim, now 25, also claimed she was gang-raped at school, and Maidstone Crown Court also heard how she admitted to relationships with older men when she was 16 and 17.

David Whitehouse QC, defending, asked the woman: ‘Do you invent things sometimes?’ – a claim she denied.

She had told the court she first had sex with Langham, who she met at the stage door of Les Miserables, after a party in London in April 1996.

But Mr Whitehouse revealed the party took place in summer 1997, making her 15 at the time.

And he said Langham left Les Miserables three months later - proving her claims they met for sex in his theatre dressing room ‘perhaps 75 times’ over 14 months were ‘lies’.

Mr Whitehouse also said she seduced Langham in a Hertfordshire hotel in January 2001, when she was 18. He said she performed oral sex on him - after which he distanced himself from her.

Again, the woman said that was a lie.

Mr Whitehouse said: ‘I suggest you are a fantasist. Your evidence is a pack of lies.’

To which she replied: ‘I may have got some dates wrong but I didn't lie.’

Langham, 58, from Golford, Kent, denies ten counts of indecent assault and two counts of a serious sexual offence between 1996 and 2000. He also denies 15 counts of making an indecent image of a child in 2005.

The case continues.

Published: 19 Jul 2007