Max Clifford held woman against wall, trial told

PR guru Max Clifford denies the charges of indecent assault. Picture: PA

PR guru Max Clifford pinned a 19-year-old woman against a wall and pushed his tongue into her mouth, a court has heard.

He put his hand on her waist, going up towards her breast, in the incident just outside his office, she said.

The woman, who managed to wriggle free, saw him on a later occasion in 1975, apparently indulging in a sex act with his secretary in, Southwark Crown Court heard yesterday.

The woman is one of seven alleged victims of indecent assault by Clifford, 70. He denies all the charges.

Another woman told how Clifford allegedly coerced her into performing a sex act on him in his office.

The woman, who is not one of the alleged victims in the case, said she had a friend who worked for Clifford as a receptionist at the time in 1982.

She had been to his offices about five times and this particular lunchtime he called her into his personal office, she said.

“He said an actress in Dynasty had had an accident when she was on holiday, riding a horse on a beach, and had broken her arm. They were filming over here, and he said he thought I would make a good Fallon.

“I remember saying that it was madness, and that I was not an actress, and had no acting experience, so it seemed ludicrous.”

He said he would get the director of Dynasty, Aaron Spelling, to ring her about it, and later she had a call from someone speaking in a camp American accent who identified himself as Spelling. The woman suspected it was Clifford speaking.

On another occasion she was at Clifford’s offices and he called her into his office again, she said. He asked her if Spelling had called her, and she ended up recounting the phone call.

He then walked around his desk, took his trousers down, and stood with his back against the door. She complied with his wish for her to masturbate him, saying: “It seemed like the easiest option, to comply.”

She said the incident made her angry. “I’ve been angry about it, more than upset, because of the way I’d been coerced, used, and I had been a laughing stock.”

And another woman who worked for Clifford for a year in 1982 said there was a very sexually orientated atmosphere in the office, with a lot of sexual banter.

She said: “Sex appeared to be on his mind most of the time.”

Models looking for work would come to the office and he would tell them he would get their pictures in the paper, said the witness, who was 18 at the time and is not a complainant.

The woman said she would sometimes listen to Clifford on the phone, and he would pretend to be Michael Winner, telling girls to wear short skirts, low tops and no knickers to the office. She said: “He would brag quite a lot about how he screwed them. That’s a word that was used in the office.”

She said it was very much a rule that if the door was shut, you should not go in. One time when someone came in and opened the door, Clifford was “up against the wall with a girl”.

On one occasion when she was in the outer office on her own, Clifford came out of his office “completely naked” and sat on the side of her desk as she placed a call for him, she said.

He persuaded her to masturbate him more than once. “I felt I had no choice,” she said.

She then told how Clifford offered to help her meet David Bowie if she gave him oral sex.

“I didn’t . . . and I didn’t meet David Bowie,” she said.

The trial continues.