The chain the Mayor forged

Labour Lord Mayor John Murray jailed for child rape.

A Labour lord mayor has been remanded in custody for sentence after a jury today convicted him of raping a child two years after he served as the city’s first citizen. John Murray (83) had pleaded not guilty in Court to sexually assaulting the child at four locations in the city on various dates between March 1996 and October 1998. Following six hours of deliberations spread over two days, the jury of seven men and five women found John Murray, guilty of raping the child after hearing evidence from 17 witnesses. A longstanding member of the Labour Party, Murray was first elected to the City Council in the 1985 local elections and re-elected in 1991. Two years later he was elected Labour lord mayor. There were emotional scenes outside Court after the verdicts as the complainant and her parents and other family members hugged each other before thanking the investigating police for all they had done. The woman told the court that the reason she didn’t come forward until adulthood was that she was afraid that she wouldn’t be believed. “He intimidated me – he was a very high profile man, he had been the Labour lord mayor.”