Ken Roache, who plays Ken Barlow in the long running soap Coronation Street, has been charged with the rape of a 15 year old girl in 1967. Police say they had enough evidence to arrest the 81 year old, but one has to wonder what chance they've got of proving it after 46 years.
It must have been a shock when police turned up at his home at breakfast time and arrested him. He arrived home late last night and is expected to make a statement today.
Producers of the show said he will be cut from episodes until the charge is dealt with. Fellow co-star Michael Le Vell who plays Kevin Webster, is accused of 19 sexual offences against a child, including rape and indecent assault and he has also disappeared from the show, awaiting the outcome of his trial.
Kevin and Sally Webster
Roache's marriage to his first wife ended in divorce in 1974 and his second wife Sara died suddenly of heart failure in 2009.
Roache is a member of the Pure Love Movement and twice a month they meet in "The Circle of Love" and discuss, among other things, spiritual healing. Roache says he has been in regular communication with the spirit of his late daughter who died when she was a toddler.
Last year, Roache boasted that he had slept with over 1,000 women in his lifetime and that he had no control over his sex drive. Now that same sex drive has come back to bite him - hard.
In a controversial interview earlier this year, he claimed that sex abuse victims were being punished because of what they did in previous lives and that famous men were "trapped" by underage groupie girls.
The leader of the Circle of Love, Anne Rogers, a 71 year old ex nurse, started the group 20 years ago. "It's not a religion and not a cult" she says. "The message is 100 per cent just love, we are not trying to convert anyone and any religion, any nationality, are all welcome.
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