He's no paedophile, says Langham wife

Published on Saturday 22 September 2007 00:08

THE wife of actor Chris Langham, who was jailed for ten months last week for downloading child porn, has vowed to stand by him insisting: "My husband is not a paedophile."

Speaking for the first time since her husband's arrest, Chrissie Langham, 54, said: "My husband's crime was of stupidity, arrogance and ghoulish curiosity, believing that he might be beyond the law and not considering the implications."

The BAFTA award-winning actor

admitted accessing videos of pre-pubescent children but claimed that he was researching a paedophile character for a television drama and also said he wanted to make sense of the sexual abuse he suffered as a child.

He was convicted by a Maidstone Crown Court jury last month of 15 counts of making an indecent photograph of a child between September and November 2005.

Mrs Langham said that her husband of 16 years was "the most passionate person I know about the wellbeing of children, physically, mentally or emotionally".

"There is nothing in his life to suggest he is a risk to anyone, nothing to suggest he is a sexual predator, and the judge said so," she said.

Mrs Langham revealed that the 58-year-old star had been verbally abused and taunted in prison, but rejected claims that he had been on suicide watch, saying he was being held in solitary confinement because of a lack of space.

She said no amount of custody would punish him more than he will punish himself.

Mrs Langham, who lives near Cranbrook, Kent, said the couple's children, Emily, 13, and Harry, ten, were not allowed to visit their father or call or write to him at Elmley Prison on the Isle of Sheppey - a ban that she is fighting.