Phillip Schofield has released a statement following the conviction of his brother Timothy for sexually abusing an adolescent boy for three years.
Timothy Schofield, 54, was accused with 11 minor sexual assaults between October 2016 and October 2019.
After more than five and a half hours of deliberation, a jurors at Exeter Crown Court declared him guilty on all charges by a vote of 10-2.
He disputed the accusations, but was found guilty on three counts of causing a child to witness sexual activity, three counts of participating in sexual activity in the presence of a child, three counts of causing a child to engage in sexual activity, and two counts of sexual activity with a child.
Schofield, a private police officer from Bath, told the jurors that he had viewed pornography with the boy, who he claimed was over the age of 16 at the time, and that they had masturbated while sitting apart, but that he had never performed sexual acts on the adolescent.
He has been held in prison until his sentencing on May 19 at Bristol Crown Court.
Now, his This Morning co-host brother has addressed the result on Instagram.
He wrote: ‘My overwhelming concern is and has always been for the wellbeing of the victim and his family.
‘I hope that their privacy will now be respected.
‘If any crime had ever been confessed to me by my sibling, I would have acted immediately to protect the victim and their family.
‘These are despicable crimes, and I welcome the guilty verdicts.’
He concluded: ‘As far as I am concerned, I no longer have a brother.’
The ITV star’s remarks follow his written statement to the court last month, in which he stated that his sibling had called him in an agitated and disturbed state.
After asking Schofield to his London residence, the broadcaster and his sibling talked for several hours.
‘I was washing up and Tim was standing behind me and he said, “You are going to hate me for what I am about to say”,’ Mr Schofield said.
‘I said there was nothing he could say that would make me hate him. 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 anymore”. I said, “You’ve got to stop, just never do it again. Regardless how that happened it must never happen again”.
‘Tim would say it was just ‘(boy) time’.
‘I said, ‘What the hell is ‘(boy) time’?’
The actor stated that he encouraged his sibling to see a doctor and seek counselling.
Meanwhile, the star, who normally co-hosts his daytime programme with Holly Willoughby, has been MIA since the trial began and is anticipated to stay so for the foreseeable future.
