Tremeloes stars acquitted of indecently assaulting 15-year-old girl

Mr Hawkes was already undergoing treatment for multiple myeloma

Richard Westwood (second left) and Leonard 'Chip' Hawkes, with their wives, outside Reading Crown Court after their acquittal (PA)

Tremeloes star Leonard "Chip" Hawkes said that accusations he indecently assaulted a teenager almost 50 years ago triggered depression, caused his cancer to flare up and have left him forever having to live with the "stigma" of being labelled a sex abuser.

The 70-year-old and his old bandmate Richard Westwood were formally acquitted of the allegation at Reading Crown Court on Friday.

But Mr Hawkes said the false accusations had led to him being assaulted in the street, shunned in public and forced to cancel a trip to sing in Australia.

And Mr Westwood said the pair had even had death threats made against them, and were left fearing they may be attacked at their homes after their addresses were published in the media.

Speaking after the hearing, Mr Hawkes said the realisation that the case was over had not sunk in yet for him or Mr Westwood.

He said: "Obviously we are completely over the moon. It's over and done with and we can get on with our lives - we can relax, I can go back to work."

The relief was a far cry from when Mr Hawkes first had to go to court in December over the allegations.

He said: "I got attacked in Chester at the first court appearance, outside in the street. Our barrister stepped in and stopped him. It was just a guy who had a lot of beer, calling me all the names under the sun, and then he tried to attack me.

"He was very verbal, and I thought, 'Blow me down, (if) this is what it's going to be like in the beginning, what's it going to be like as we go along?"'

Mr Westwood recalled the incident as being more sinister.

He told the Press Association: "A boy, maybe in his late teens or early twenties, confronted Chip while recording him on video with a mobile phone and screamed, 'F*****g paedo prick, if that was my daughter I would f*****g kill you'.

"That was very scary because we've never had death threats before and we ran back to the car.

"It was very worrying when we got back home because the press announced our full home addresses and we wondered if we were going to be visited by some nasty people who believed the accusations."

Heckled at other hearings by people again calling him names and accusing him of being a paedophile, the case began to take its toll on Mr Hawkes' health.

Mr Hawkes was already undergoing treatment for multiple myeloma, a bone marrow cancer which left him in a wheelchair and six inches shorter after six vertebrae collapsed, and he fell even further ill.

As well as aggravating the cancer, the case brought on a depression, which he described as "just feeling down all the time - basically not good".

He said: "By rights I shouldn't even be here. But I'm still here, still walking."

His wife Carol, a former actress and game show host, added: "We wondered if this was going to finish him off.

"It was a double-whammy, especially as we knew it was all totally untrue. It was a complete figment of her imagination."

Mrs Hawkes said: "We kept saying ourselves, 'How can it carry on like this', because we saw all the evidence and just couldn't understand why it was going on from the beginning.

"There was too many contradicting remarks."

The allegations affected their wider family, particularly son, the singer Chesney Hawkes - best known for the song The One And Only - who was taunted about his father at his own concerts.

And they have affected Mr Hawkes' career, with a trip to Australia to sing with former Tremeloes frontman Brian Poole cancelled because he was not allowed to travel with a pending court case.

He said: "The promoters are wary of it and they just don't want to take a chance, even though they know me as a friend. There's always a stigma."

Press Association