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A “manipulator and predatory” actor who starred in Netflix show Sex Education has been found guilty of more than two dozen sex offences, including against children.
Alexander Westwood, 24, from Albrighton in Shropshire, was found guilty at Wolverhampton Crown Court over a 26 sexual offences against women and children. He will be sentenced in February next year.
During the trial, Westwood was described as a “rotten apple” and “supreme manipulator” who used his position of authority as an acting teacher to prey on his young pupils.
Jurors were also told that sexual abuse was a part of Westwood’s “lifestyle”.
His youngest offence dates back to when Westwood was just 10, while the prosecution claimed the suspect had shown a “fascination” with pornography from a young age.
Prosecutor Andrew Wallace spoke of two teenage girls who came to Westwood for help with acting, only to be “forced to act out the most inappropriate scenes” and systematically abused over years.
“As fame beckons, he met two impressionable 16-year-olds and used his revered position to abuse them,” he said.
Between November 2020 and September 2021, the suspect raped and sexually assaulted one of the pupils, who was going to drama school in Birmingham, repeatedly.
Mr Wallace said Westwood would touch her, touch himself and rape her.
He talked to her about a sex scene from the 1991 film Frankie and Johnny and a masturbation scene from Bridgerton, Mr Wallace said, as well as filming her naked on his iPad.
When she questioned and challenged him, he would say “do what your teacher says… do you trust me?”, he added.
After she talked about not coming to Westwood’s sessions anymore, the culprit introduced a contract, described by the prosecution as a “coercive tool to keep her in line” that said she would owe him thousands of pounds if she did not keep attending his lessons.
His abuse of the second teenager overlapped, occurring between May and August 2021.
Other instances of abuse included forcing a young girl, who he systematically abused for seven years, to drink his urine.
Mr Wallace claimed the abuse of the girl at a house in Walsall, West Midlands included vile actions which numbered more than the ten charges relating to her.
He added: “If we were to list every instance there would be hundreds of charges.”
Additional reporting by SWNS
Source: independent.co.uk
