JURORS trying the case of veteran DJ Dave Lee Travis should forget about allegations against other celebrities in the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal as they deliberate their verdicts, a judge has said.
Beginning to sum up the assault case against the former Top Of The Pops presenter at London's Southwark Crown Court, Judge Anthony Leonard also told jurors not to allow themselves "to become overawed or deflated by the interest this case has attracted".
He said the allegations relating to two indecent assault charges and one sexual assault charge against Travis - on trial under his real name, David Griffin - dated back to a "long time ago, and some of them a very long time ago", and therefore they should understand if both the defendant and witnesses sometimes struggled to recall events.
He said:"The fact that the defendant is a well known media personality does not change the rules of this case." Referring to the fact that the investigation into Travis, 69, is part of Operation Yewtree, the inquiry set up in the wake of the Savile scandal, the judge said: "There is no such thing as guilt or innocence by association."
The defendant is facing a retrial on one count of indecent assault of a woman in the early 1990s and another of sexual assault on a different woman in 2008 - on which a jury was unable to reach verdicts at a trial earlier this year.
Travis, of Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, has also pleaded not guilty to an additional count of indecent assault alleged to have taken place on January 17 1995.
The trial continues.
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