Report: BBC’s Doctor Who Staffers Used Show to Sexually Exploit Young Male Fans

-By Warner Todd Huston

In the wake of the Jimmy Savile sex abuse scandal, the British Broadcasting Service (BBC) is being hit with new allegations that behind the camera staffers–this time from the Doctor Who kiddy sci-fi show–sexually abused youngsters who visited the famed broadcasting studios.

First airing in the early 1960s, Doctor Who is Britain’s longest running science fiction TV series and was until recently was considered a kid’s show. The allegations are over events that took place in the 1980s.

In a new book on the life of Doctor Who producer John Nathan-Turner, fan writer Richard Marson claims that he was propositioned and assaulted by the producer when he was a teenaged visitor to the Doctor Who studios in 1984.

Marson himself since became a BBC producer but in 1984 he was just a fan of the children’s TV series and felt lucky to be a visitor to the studios to see the sets and meet the stars.

But according to Marson, he got more than he bargained for when show producer Nathan-Turner tried to convince the young man to have sex with him. Nathan-Turner, who died in 2002, was a well-known and open homosexual–not that the teenaged visitor knew that at the time.

In an interview for his book, JN-T The Life & Scandalous Times of John Nathan-Turner, Marson told British sci fi magazine Starburst that the whole thing was a “nightmare” when the TV producer began accosting him.

“I was a bit taken aback,” Marson told the magazine. “I was only 17 and…_he said to me, ‘You’re so f****** provincial.’ And of course I was f******* provincial, I came from Bishop’s Stortford, I didn’t know about anything.”

Marson also claims that a wealthy fan supplied Nathan-Turner with male escorts in exchange for visits to the studio and time with stars.

“I think what you had was a promiscuous gay bloke in a position where his social life was very actively busy, and he had the opportunity to meet a lot of young people, and did like getting off with young guys,” Marson said.

These allegations come after the Jimmy Savile sex abuse scandal that rocked the Beeb. Savile, who passed away in 2011, was accused of abusing up to 300 teenaged fans. For decades Savile was one of the BBC’s most famous TV and radio presenters.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson

Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.

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Copyright Publius Forum 2001