Lost At Sea Part 55

The Super 8s continue in Deniz's living room. Here's Jonathan again, in 1983, backstage at the Hop. He's put on weight. He doesn't know the camera is on him. He's holding court to a group of young boys and girls on a sofa. You can just make out little snippets of conversation over the noise of the disco. He chews on a toothpick, looks down at a piece of paper, turns to a boy and says, "Whose phone number is this?"

He spots the camera. "It's Deniz Corday!" he yells. "Look who it is! Deniz Corday! Smile at the camera!" He lifts up his T-shirt and Deniz zooms in on his chest.

"In thirty-two years," says Deniz, "we never had one complaint about Jonathan and young boys, and suddenly, after thirty-two years, all these old men-grandfathers, some of them-come forward and say they've been s.e.xually abused and it's been bothering them all their lives. I think there's something deeply suspicious about it. Jonathan's a really nice guy and definitely not a pedophile. Anyway, I think it should be reworded. I think a pedophile should be someone who goes with someone under thirteen."

The clothes and hairstyles change as the decades roll past on the Super 8s, but the faces of the thirteen- to eighteen-year-olds remain the same. They are young and happy. Deniz says that, nowadays, we have an absurdly halcyon image of childhood. He says that the youngsters at the Walton Hop were not fragile little flowers. They were big and tough and they could look after themselves. He rifles through his drawer and produces some of the police evidence statements. He reads me some excerpts.

"'There was a crate of Coca-Cola kept backstage, and it was people like Jonathan King and Corday who hung around there. If you were invited back there you would get a free c.o.ke with a shot of whisky.'"

Deniz pauses. "Now, how ridiculous can you get? I'm going to give the kids of the Hop a shot of whisky with a c.o.ke?"

There is a silence.

"Well," he says quietly. "If I gave them a little bit of whisky once in a while, they're not going to put me in jail for it. I used to call it 'c.o.ke with a kick.' Anyway, we're not talking about me. We're talking about Jonathan. Have you heard of any charges against me?"

"No," I say.

"Exactly," says Deniz. "This is about Jonathan. Not about me."

Deniz continues to read. The victim making the statement describes life at the Walton Hop and how Jonathan once went out of his way to talk to him.

"'I was obviously excited to be talking to Jonathan King. He offered to give me a lift home, which I accepted. This was the first of many lifts King gave me, and I recall that he always drove me home in a white convertible Rolls-Royce. It was an automatic car and the number plate was JK9000. We talked about music, and he often told me that he needed a young person's point of view. King drove me home on a couple of occasions before he eventually a.s.saulted me. The first a.s.sault occurred at a car park, which was situated on the left-hand side of the Old Woking Road. Next to the car park was a field and a wooded area. King seemed familiar with the location. I believe he had been there before. I was sat in the front pa.s.senger seat and King was in the driver seat. I noticed that King had started shaking, and I presumed that he needed the toilet.'"

Deniz laughs.

"Well, you can laugh occasionally," he says.

He continues to read. "'He then leaned over to where I was sat. To my horror he started pulling at my trousers. He wrenched my trousers open and he just went for it.'"

Deniz reads the statement with mock, burlesque horror.

"'He had his face in my lap and he was performing oral s.e.x on me by putting his mouth around my p.e.n.i.s. I was so shocked.'"

Deniz looks up. "He doesn't say if he had an erection!" he laughs.

"'After a while he stopped performing oral s.e.x on me, and although my p.e.n.i.s was erect I did not e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.e. I then noticed that King had his trousers undone with his p.e.n.i.s exposed and he started masturbating himself. I remember looking out of the window and contemplating walking home. I did not because I just hoped that once he was done he would drop me home. King eventually came and he then drove me home. I didn't want Jonathan to tell Deniz what had happened, because I thought he'd want to do the same thing.'"

"No thanks, mate," says Deniz, before carrying on with the statement.

"'I felt sick and ashamed about what he had done to me, and I remember looking in the mirror the next day and wondering if you could see what had happened in my face. The second a.s.sault on me by King took place near the car park which had been previously described. This time he b.u.g.g.e.red me... . Once at the location, we got out of the car and he then led me about fifteen yards to a dip in a wooded area. King led me by placing one hand on the back of my neck and the other on my arm. King was shaking. King then took my trousers and underwear down. He then forced his p.e.n.i.s inside my a.n.u.s and penetrated me. I would describe King as frantic at the time. He was totally uncaring. I honestly believe if I had said no, he would have forced me. King had his underwear and trousers down by his ankles and he used no lubrication. I can also say that he did not have a huge p.e.n.i.s.'"

Deniz laughs. "I'm glad to hear that, mate!" he says.

"'Although he was rough, it was not painful. I was in a state of shock. King eventually came inside of me and it was all very quick. Not only did I wash that night, but I constantly washed myself that week. I hated what he had done to me and I felt dirty. It may be that King grabbed some of my hair, because for about a week I washed my hair every day, which was most unlike me. I even remember my dad making some comment about me using so much shampoo. The third time King a.s.saulted me was ...'"

Deniz looks up angrily. "How many times do you have to go back before you decide that you don't like being f.u.c.ked? Does it take three s.e.xual experiences for you to realize it was bothering you? 'The third time King a.s.saulted me was, again, following a lift home from the Hop. This time it did hurt and I told him that, but he did not stop. I even asked him if he used Vaseline, and he replied, "Oh no, you'll do with spit." It all happened very fast, and he was very surgical and physical. I would also like to add that King never kissed me or showed me any affection. Many years later I attended the Brit Awards, and while I was there I saw Jonathan King. On seeing me, he gave me a long stare and then walked away. I believe he is dangerous and I want to stop it happening to other children.'"

Deniz looks up, in fury, from the evidence statement.

"He wasn't a child!" he says.

"How old was he?" I say.

"Fifteen," says Deniz.

In the end, Jonathan is acquitted of this particular charge. The victim admits on the witness stand that he was probably sixteen when he knew Jonathan, and the prosecution can't prove that the s.e.x was nonconsensual. While there is no statute of limitations for underage s.e.x-or for s.e.xual a.s.saults-a sixteen-year-old who has had consensual s.e.x with an adult must, by law, complain within a year of the offense for the adult to be tried. This boy waited twenty-three years, which is why his case is abandoned.

The day after I see Deniz, I receive an e-mail: "Hope you'll remember Deniz is not quite as worldly wise as others-don't hurt him. JK."

I always find it hard to look Jonathan in the eye after hearing some detailed recital of his s.e.xual behavior. But I wonder whether any act of s.e.x, when described with such precision, would sound equally unpleasant. The evidence Deniz read me const.i.tutes probably the most serious charge of all sixteen complaints, and even it is not as black-and-white as one might like. Why, for instance, did the victim return on two occasions?

I would like to ask Jonathan his views on the intricacies of these s.e.xual power plays, but he professes his innocence so adamantly that he won't be drawn on the subject. I do, however, get to ask another of his victims, Nick McMeier, these questions. One morning in November, I sit in Nick's flat in Kingston, Surrey, and he shows me some of the presents Jonathan bought him during their time together.

"Whenever I visited, I'd end up with two or three records," says Nick. "So I guess you can calculate how many times I visited him on that basis."

I look at the pile of records. "There must be thirty or forty records here," I say. "Or more."

"And he gave me a copy of his book Bible Two," says Nick. "And a guitar. And a biography of Edie Sedgwick."

Jonathan also took Nick on trips-to the Walton Hop, for instance, and to Deniz's house, although nothing happened there. He gave him driving lessons in his TR7 in the car park of Chessington World of Adventures. "He enjoyed being a.s.sertive. He was never particularly shy about name-dropping or describing just how famous he was." Nick laughs. "There was one occasion where we were in his Rolls-Royce in London and he pulled out in front of somebody and they beeped him and he turned round and said, 'Do you mind? There's a famous person here!' And we carried on driving. It made me laugh at the time because it was true. He was a famous person."

"Do you think that if you'd stopped being starstruck, he would have lost interest in you?" I ask.

"Yes," says Nick.

Nick is thirty-four, and very good-looking. He tells me how they first met. He was between fourteen and sixteen-he can't exactly remember-and he was cycling home from Richmond Park when Jonathan King pulled over in his Rolls-Royce and asked him directions to the Kingston bypa.s.s.

"I gave him the directions and then he said, 'Do you know who I am?' 'Actually, no.' He said, 'You do realize who I am?' And I said, 'Yeah. I do.' I tried to act as un-starstruck as I possibly could."

As they stood there on the road, Jonathan asked Nick to phone the BBC and tell them just how much he enjoyed his TV shows and could they please commission more from him. Nick agreed, although he never did phone.

They swapped phone numbers and Jonathan called several weeks later and invited him to his flat.

"We listened to some records, had a bit of a chat. He showed off his mirrored toilet. He said, 'Take a look in there, it's pretty impressive.' So I went in there and was duly impressed. And that was pretty much it."

This was the only time that no s.e.x took place. On every other occasion, Jonathan b.u.g.g.e.red Nick. "Why did you keep going back?" I ask.

"I don't really know. Well, I was getting records every time. But I was also enjoying the s.e.xual gratification. I wasn't racked with guilt. At that age, you've got the hormones raging around inside you. And I felt taken care of. I knew that wasn't how grown-ups normally took care of children, but he had a kind of invincibility about him. A self-a.s.surance."

Nick's relationship with Jonathan King lasted eighteen months. In the intervening years, he has come to identify the extent of the emotional scarring those months caused him. He has just completed six weeks of therapy, which, he says, has barely scratched the surface.

"It caused a division between my emotional side and myself," he says. "It was like I put my emotions in a room and shut the door. It's not even something I was aware of happening until I spoke to the police and they came to interview me. And two days later this incredible dark cloud came over me, like a black dog. It also bothers me quite a lot that I was lying to my parents. He even came round one Christmas and met the whole family. We got together a Christmas stocking for him with a pound coin in the bottom of it and a satsuma."

Nick says that he has seen the message Jonathan posted on his website, comparing his victims to the terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center.

"I think he's rather a sad, impotent man," says Nick, "whose chickens have come home to roost." He laughs. "But that's probably a coping mechanism for myself to disenfranchise him of any power."

On day five of the trial, one of the victims says in court that Jonathan had a blue door, when in fact his door was white. This presumably trivial inaccuracy gives rise to the following e-mail from Jonathan: "The accusers have provenly lied on oath-blue front door etc. Will the CPS prosecute them for perjury? Rather doubt it. If the verdicts are guilty, they collect their cash from the Compensation Board... . Is this right or fair? A topic you may feel inclined to raise in your wonderful story. See you later. JK."