Rape claim woman `did not lie to police'

A WOMAN who alleged that she was raped by a cousin of mass killer Fred West when she was 15 denied yesterday that she was lying to share in the "glamour" of the Cromwell Street inquiry.

The woman, now in her 30s, told a jury that the man, William John Hill, raped her in an upstairs bedroom of his village home in the late 1970s.

She and another woman gave accounts of how they were allegedly raped as schoolgirls by Mr Hill, 45, of Near Green Close, near Ledbury, Hereford and Worcester. He denies their claims, and two other alleged rapes of teenage visitors.

The women, now in their 30s, told the jury at Birmingham Crown Court that Mr Hill attacked them when they separately visited his home in thevillage of Much Marcle. They alleged that he also indecently assaulted them in a garden shed. One said she was raped five or six times, aged 13 and 14, when out for drives in his three-wheel Robin Reliant car.

The other alleged victim said she was raped once - when a 15-year- old virgin - in a bedroom at Mr Hill's home. She insisted she had not made up a statement to Cromwell Street inquiry officers in September 1995 when she claimed to have seen Fred West at his Gloucester home.

She denied making up the claims because she wanted "to jump on the bandwagon" after bodies were discovered in Much Marcle and in Gloucester. She also denied lying to get money from the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board for the abuse she allegedly suffered.

The trial continues today.