Actor guilty of raping teen in acting classes

A "manipulative and predatory" actor who appeared in Netflix's Sex Education has been found guilty of 26 sex offences, including against children and two pupils he gave acting classes to.

Alexander Westwood, from Albrighton in Shropshire, had a fascination with pornography from a young age, his trial heard.

He denied 26 offences, including raping a school girl who came to him for acting tuition and sexually assaulting a child over an eight-year period.

He will be sentenced at Wolverhampton Crown Court on 25 February.

Warning: Some people may find details in this story distressing.

Jurors heard Westwood, who also appeared in the BBC's Doctors series, was a "rotten apple" and his repeated sexual offending was "a habit, a lifestyle".

"He is a predator," prosecutor Andrew Wallace said.

Speaking of two teenage girls who came to him for help with acting, Mr Wallace said one was "forced to act out the most inappropriate scenes", while the second - following her "dream" of going from school to drama college in Birmingham - was systematically abused by him.

“As fame beckons, he met two impressionable 16-year-olds and used his revered position to abuse them," he said.

Between November 2020 and September 2021, Westwood raped and sexually assaulted the pupil going to drama school as well as inciting her to engage in sexual activity.

“She had ambitions to be an actress. She arranged lessons with him and over the course of time the defendant was able to do the most despicable acts with her," Mr Wallace said.

He would touch her, touch himself and raped her, he added.

Westwood talked to her about a sex scene from the 1991 film Frankie and Johnny and a masturbation scene from Bridgerton, Mr Wallace said.

When she questioned and challenged him, he would say "do what your teacher says… do you trust me?", he added.

She was told not to tell anyone and when she talked about not coming any more, he introduced a contract - a "coercive tool to keep her in line" - that "tied her in" to 365 lessons saying she would owe him as much as £18,000 or £36,000 if she broke it.

He also threatened at one point to tell her principal, Mr Wallace said.

The victim was a girl who had a place at a Birmingham theatre school and "anything he can provide in acting and drama she can get there and more", he added.

“In theatrical terms he’s a nobody. She did not need him but boy, did he need her."

His abuse of the second teenager overlapped, occurring between May and August 2021.

She was shown a script depicting a scene between a father and daughter in Greek mythology and Westwood suggested she be nude, but she declined and later described it as "weird".

But he said she had to and she did undress “but only because he kept going on about it”.

He touched her breast and vaginal area. She said she felt "disgusted".

She messaged him later on to say she felt “uncomfortable” to which he replied: "It’s just part of acting."

She said she decided she would not meet him again.

Mr Wallace said the girls were "strangers to one another, but talk about the same situation".

Jurors heard that another victim, a woman who was sexually assaulted between September 2020 and October 2021, was pinned down by her wrists and the only thing she could do to get away was to bite him.

"She said he held me down and shouted at me and she'd say 'I don't want to have sex'. He would say 'you have got to lie there'," Mr Wallace added.

The repeated sexual assault of a child between 2010 and 2018 was described as an "extraordinary catalogue of abuse that happened hundreds of times."

The victim was made to watch porn, touched and incited to engage in sexual activity.

Westwood was also convicted of inciting another child, a boy aged between nine and 10, to engage in sexual activity.

Defending, James Bloomer had urged jurors to leave emotion out of their decision-making and questioned the accounts of his victims.

He cited one woman's delay in mentioning any offending as "lost opportunities", which made it harder to be sure about what she was saying.

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