Phillip Schofield responds after brother found guilty of sexual abuse of boy
Phillip Schofield has responded following his brother’s guilty verdict for sexual abuse.
“As far as I am concerned, I no longer have a brother,” the This Morning presenter said.
Timothy Schofield has been found guilty of sexually abusing a teenage boy over the course of three years. More than five-and-half hours of deliberating took place ahead of announcing the 54-year-old’s verdict earlier today.
“My overwhelming concern is and has always been for the wellbeing of the victim and his family,” Phillip Schofield said.
“I hope that their privacy will now be respected. If any crime had ever been confessed to me by my brother, I would have acted immediately to protect the victim and their family.
“These are despicable crimes, and I welcome the guilty verdicts.”
Timothy Schofield admitted to masturbating while sitting near to the boy in question, but denied that they had been sexually intimate.
In court, Timothy Schofield had said the boy in question was over 16 when they met but admitted to searching for “young boy teen sex” on porn websites.
He said that he’d told his brother, the TV presenter Phillip, that the duo had watched porn together back in 2021 and that the This Morning presenter had told him it “must never happen again.”
Phillip Schofield’s statement read: “Then he said that he and [the boy] had time together and that last year they had watched porn… and [masturbated]”.
“I turned and said: ‘What did you just say?’ He said it was last year and we were alone together. Tim said it was just this once. I told him it should never happen again. He then started to tell me about [the boy’s] body.
“I said: ‘F***, stop.’ I shouted at Tim that he had to stop. I didn’t want to know any of the details but he made it sound like a one-off.
“I said: ‘I don’t want you to tell me any more.’ I said: ‘You’ve got to stop, just never do it again. Regardless how that happened, it must never happen again’.”
The boy said: “I felt that emotionally there was no escape from what we had to do and I felt that there was a tremendous amount of pressure and expectation for me to fulfil what was being asked and wanted.”
Timothy Schofield denies three counts of causing a child to watch sexual activity, three counts of engaging in sexual activity in the presence of a child, three of causing a child to engage in sexual activity, and two counts of sexual activity with a child.
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