Months after BBC director general Tim Davie said there was “no evidence of complaints,” the BBC has said it has received six complaints against DJ Tim Westwood.
The 64-year-old Westwood presented shows on BBC Radio 1 and Radio 1Xtra between 1994 and 2013. In April, a joint investigation conducted by the BBC and the Guardian brought to light the accounts of seven Black women who alleged sexual touching and sexual misconduct by Westwood between 1992 and 2017. They were featured in the BBC Three documentary, “Tim Westwood: Abuse of Power.”
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Westwood denies all charges. He has stepped down from his show on radio station Capital Xtra until further notice, parent company Global said.
At the time, Davie, who was director of audio and music at the BBC from 2008-2012, had said “we looked at our records and we’ve seen no evidence of complaints” against Westwood.
Davie also said: “Every complaint has to be taken seriously. If anything comes up we will investigate it fully. If people have evidence where things weren’t followed up or they have concern in this area bring it to us… we will follow up anything and we will dig and dig and dig. If people have got evidence of wrongdoing we need to bring it forward.”
In 2021, a BBC News journalist had requested information about complaints against Westwood in a request made under the Freedom of Information Act, but the corporation had declined to confirm or deny that it had any information about his alleged behavior.
The details about the six complaints emerged after BBC News took up the corporation’s response with the Information Commissioner’s Office, which manages Freedom of Information Act requests in the U.K.
“As we have said, if people have things that they want to raise with the BBC, then they should do so. People have now done so and we will continue to investigate,” a BBC spokesperson said in a statement shared with Variety. “We also said that we would dig into what happened in the past. We are doing that with great care. All of that work hasn’t concluded and is ongoing. We said we would take this seriously, and we are. When that work has concluded, we will say more.”
Variety has reached out to Westwood’s representatives for comment.
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