Press Trust of India
London, June 15: Clement Freud, one of Britain’s well-known broadcasters and the grandson of Sigmund Freud, has been accused of paedophilia in the UK dating back over 75 years. The Vienna-born grandson of Freud, the founder of psycho-analysis, is believed to have abused two girls between the late 1940s and 1970s. The revelations emerged in a documentary titled ‘Exposure: Abused and Betrayed – A Life Sentence’, to be broadcast on the UK’s ITV channel. “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,” said Sylvia Woosley, one of the victims who first met Clement when she was 10 and was sent to live with him at 14 after her parents’ marriage broke up.
“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 added. A second woman, who wants to remain anonymous, claimed Clement abused her as a child and raped her when she was 18. Clement died at his home 15 April 2009, nine days before his 85th birthday. Clement’s widow Jill Freud said she was “deeply saddened” after her children viewed the documentary on her behalf before telecast.
