A DJ friend of Jimmy Savile has been convicted of sex offences against young girls.
Ex-Radio Caroline DJ Ray Teret (73) used his celebrity status in the Manchester club scene in the 1960s and 1970s to prey on his victims.
Teret, known as Ugly Ray, was mentored by Savile in the early days of his career and was described as following him around “like a shadow”, Manchester Minshull Street Crown Court heard.
Teret, of Woodlands Road, Altrincham, England told the jury he had no interest in underage girls, despite a previous conviction for sexual intercourse with a 15-year-old girl in 1999 for which he went to jail for six months.
He denied 18 rapes, two other serious sexual assaults, one attempted rape, 12 indecent assaults and one count of indecency with a child.
After more 60 hours of deliberations, he was convicted of seven rapes and 11 indecent assaults. He was cleared of the other charges.
Opening the case, prosecutor Tim Evans said: “The Crown say that young teenage girls, far from doing nothing for him, were consistently pursued by him through the 60s and 70s.”
Many of the victims were starstruck, with DJs treated like “royalty” in that era, said Mr Evans.
He said: “The basic set-up, the background is the same — a naive girl who has the headlights of fame shone on her, who is taken to a flat and without any understanding of what is going on, has a male many years older, having sex with her.”
Giving evidence, Teret told the prosecutor that men who pounced on a girl and hoped to get away with it “want shooting” and he had never been in that situation.
He said: “I only make love. Not sex, sir. I only make love with ladies who want to make love with me.”
The jury found Teret guilty of seven rapes and 11 indecent assaults, and not guilty of one serious sexual assault in relation to 11 victims. He was cleared of various sexual offences in relation to six other complainants.
Teret was cleared of aiding and abetting Savile to rape a 15-year-old girl in the early 1960s but was found guilty himself of raping the same complainant.
The Crown had said that Teret lied to the naive teenager that he was 17 and drove her from a disco in Savile’s bubble car to a nearby flat.
Savile was waiting as he sat next to her and said she had lovely hair as he began to stroke it, the woman told the court.
She said she started to tell him how she had recently dyed her hair when the serial paedophile put his hands up her skirt and pulled her knickers down before he pushed her on to a bed and raped her.
Teret came into the room after Savile left and also raped her on the bed, she said. He then was said to have told her: “You should be thanking us because we have made it easier for when the next person goes there.”
Jimmy Savile friendship
Teret attempted to distance himself from his former mentor Jimmy Savile.
He claimed that contrary to press reports they were not close, he had never lived with him, nor acted as his chauffeur.
Salisbury-born Teret also denied he had appeared on screen with him on BBC’s Top Of The Pops, where Savile was said to have introduced him “as my friend Ray Teret”.
Teret said: “He didn’t introduce me to anyone. He would say this is my driver, my mechanic, my cleaner. He would make up something, whatever dream came into his head. ‘My accountant’, he would call me most times.”
Teret said he first met Savile in the late 1950s when he presented him with an award at a singing contest at a Manchester ballroom.
Teret went on to become a waiter at The Ritz ballroom in Manchester city centre in the early 1960s and it was there that he met Savile again, who remembered him as “The Singer”.
He was then offered a job at his Jimmy Savile Disc Club in Higher Broughton.
Teret said: “He explained how to count the beats on the record, the tempo. How to project to the back of the hall rather than shouting, things like that.
“He told me to do the first hour, which was nerve-racking. I was learning to be a disc jockey.”
Teret claimed he was not in regular contact with Savile from the mid-60s to the end of the 70s and said Savile never phoned him personally in that period.
Asked about a photograph of himself sitting next to Savile in deckchairs, he denied it was a holiday snap.
He said he thought it was taken in Blackpool in 1978 and the occasion was “a handicapped children’s outing which Mr Savile did”.
PA