Widow ‘deeply saddened and profoundly sorry’ over Clement Freud child abuse allegations

The widow of Sir Clement Freud has apologised after the late broadcaster was accused of abusing two girls between the late 1940s and 1970s.

Sylvia Woosley, who first met Freud when she was 10 and later went to live with him when her mother’s marriage broke down, claims in an ITV Exposure documentary that he molested her over several years.

A second woman, who wants to remain anonymous, alleged that the Liberal politician also abused her as a child and raped her when she was 18.

Freud, who was friends with Gerry and Kate McCann, the parents of missing three-year-old Madeleine who disappeared in 2007, was married to Jill, 89, for nearly 60 years.

In a statement released in response to the programme, his widow said: “This is a very sad day for me. I was married to Clement for 58 years and loved him dearly. I am shocked, deeply saddened and profoundly sorry for what has happened to these women. I sincerely hope they will now have some peace.”

ITV said two of Freud’s children had viewed the documentary before broadcast on their mother’s behalf.

In the programme, due to be screened on Wednesday, Ms Woosley, now in her late 70s, said: “I just want to clear things up before I die … I want to die clean.

“Having been so hard on myself, trying to destroy myself so many times, you can’t bury the truth forever, it needs to be heard.

“I don’t want to take this to my tomb. I would like to just return to the child I was before I was molested physically, before I was introduced to that side of life too early.”

She told the programme she first met Freud, known as Clay, when he was 24 and working at the Martinez hotel in Cannes in the late 1940s. She was 10 and her family was living in the south of France.

Ms Woosley (pictured) claims he kissed her on the mouth during a bus trip. She said: “I was disgusted and helpless. I just didn’t react in any way because I couldn’t. I didn’t know what to do.”

From the age of 14, when she lived with Freud and his wife in London for five years, she claims he frequently molested her, even “playfully” touching her breast in front of his wife, although she believes Mrs Freud had no knowledge of the abuse.

Later, when she was in her early 40s, Ms Woosley said she confronted Freud at the House of Commons and asked why he had abused her. She said he replied: “Because I loved you. You were a very sensual little girl.”

The second woman said she first met Freud in 1971 at her family home when she was a “lonely, neglected and socially isolated” 11-year-old.

Then a celebrity, he would call her on the phone and tell her she was special and intelligent, and he was treated as a surrogate father figure by her parents, she said.

Two years later, after he was elected as an MP, he would take her on trips to Parliament and his home, and would kiss her on the mouth and hug her.

She said: “I felt sick but grateful at the same time. Frightened and unable to move or react in any way.”

When she was 14, she claims Freud asked her and another friend of the same age: “Would you like to get naked and have some fun?”

Four years later, in June 1978, when she was 18, the woman alleges that he came over to her parents’ flat and “brutally and perfunctorily” raped her.

She told the broadcaster: “I live in constant terror that I’ll be found out, exposed. I’ve already suffered across nearly 40 years. It’s not simply to be labelled as depression or mental illness – this is disempowerment, self-destructiveness and grief. This is what real suffering looks like.”

A celebrated food, sport and comment print journalist, Freud also enjoyed a long career as a television and radio personality.

He wore “so many hats” that he was hard to pin down, Kate McCann noted, recalling the time she and her husband were invited to Freud’s for lunch in Portugal shortly after Madeleine went missing.

He was “incredibly warm, funny and instantly likeable”, and cheered the couple up with his “lugubrious wit”, she wrote in her book on her daughter’s disappearance.

A spokesman for the Liberal Democrats said: “These allegations are horrific. We are desperately sorry to learn that lives have been ruined by a man whose public face was so greatly at odds to his true character. It has clearly taken a lot of courage for these women to speak out, after a lifetime of having to hide it.

“This is the latest in a terrifying line of cases where high-profile figures have systematically used their status, celebrity and power, to abuse and to rape.

“Clement Freud was a senior figure in the Liberals, our party’s predecessor, and we are deeply shocked and horrified by this news. Our party was never aware of what happened, and our hearts go out to the women who were affected.”

Exposure: Abused And Betrayed – A Life Sentence will be broadcast on ITV at 11.05pm on Wednesday.

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