Actor John Alford abused girls at party, trial told

Former London’s Burning actor John Alford sexually abused two teenage girls at a party, a court has heard.

Mr Alford is accused of four counts of sexual activity with a 14-year-old and two counts relating to a second girl, then aged 15, of sexual assault and assault by penetration.

Prosecutors told St Albans Crown Court that both girls were drunk when the incidents happened at a “bit of a party” at a home in Hertfordshire on 9 April 2022.

The 53-year-old, of Holloway, north London, denies the offences.

Mr Alford is charged under his real name, John Shannon.

“Mr Shannon was in no doubt that these two girls were both under 16,” said prosecutor Julie Whitby, opening her case on the first day of the trial.

“They just thought they were having an evening with a family friend.”

Jurors were told he had been at a pub with a man who was the father of a third girl – a friend of the alleged victims.

Both men arrived at the home at about 02:00 and the defendant asked the girls how old they were, the court heard.

Mr Alford briefly left the property, but came back from a nearby petrol station with a bottle of vodka, the trial was told.

He asked the 14-year-old girl to sit on his lap after going into the garden for a cigarette, which she described as feeling “a bit strange”, prosecutors said.

The alleged victim said he had sex with her in the garden and later in a toilet.

“He asked her ‘Do you want this babe?’ and she said no,” Ms Whitby said.

In a video recording of her interview with police, shown to jurors, the 14-year-old girl said “he raped me”.

She said she did not know Mr Alford.

The alleged victim said she had never had sex before the incident, and that: “I told him to stop because I didn’t want to have sex with an old man”.

She asked him to stop “three or four times”, she claimed.

Both girls did not say anything about the alleged assaults immediately after they happened as they had been drinking “a fair amount of vodka”, Ms Whitby said.

Police received a third-party report from the 15-year-old girl’s mother two days later, outlining the allegations, jurors were told.

The court was told that in a statement provided to police, Alford said one of the two girls “kept on trying to kiss me” and had told him she was 17 years old.

He added: “At no point did I touch her in any sexual way whatsoever.”

Alford said the two alleged victims were “trying to extort money from him and they were trying to trick him”, but no material supporting these claims was found on either the girls’ or the defendant’s phones when searched, Ms Whitby said.

The trial continues.