Alleged Roache victim: 'I blamed myself...I was a kid'

A woman has told the trial of Coronation Street actor Bill Roache that the 81-year-old raped her on two separate occasions when she was 15 years old in 1967.

The woman, who cannot be identified, said years later an interview with the actor talking about the women in his life "made her skin crawl".

In her police interview played to Preston Crown Court, the woman told a female officer:

But by last year she said "it has started to bother me because there might be other people that this has happened to".

She continued: "It started where I can't sleep, it is there at the back of my mind all the time."

The alleged victim said she was raped twice by Roache in his then home in Lancashire.

Speaking of the first alleged incident, she said: "I was a bit shocked. There was no warning to anything that would have happened. There was nothing to suggest that anything improper was going to happen.

"It happened before I realised it. I didn't know what to do. I was panicking. I didn't have to fight him. He was not aggressive in any way."

She added: "I thought it was my fault and I didn't know why because nothing had taken place before that suggested that anything was going to happen."

The woman said she was raped again later in the year when he again invited her into his home. "Before I knew it I had been grabbed again," she said.

Bill Roache, 81, of Wilmslow, Cheshire, denies five historical counts of indecent assault and two historical counts of rape, involving complainants who were aged 16 and under.

The offences are said to have occurred between 1965 and 1971. He denies all charges.

The woman said she had recently watched a TV interview Roache gave for Piers Morgan's Life Stories.

"He was talking about the number of women in his life," she said. "He was quite amused by it all. It made my skin crawl to be honest. It was just the way he laughed it all off. It was the sort of way he was laughing."

The trial continues.