Senior female BBC employees say corporation ‘ignored’ harassment by DJ

Former Radio Leeds editor Rozina Breen is one of four women who Mr Justice Saini ruled were targeted by Belfield in ‘a personal campaign of revenge’. Photograph: Jill Mead/The Guardian

The BBC has been accused by senior female employees of failing to help them during a 10-year campaign of harassment against them by a former local radio presenter, Alex Belfield, who is now in jail for stalking.

The women – who include the corporation’s outgoing director of BBC England, Helen Thomas – are furious that the BBC wouldn’t commission an independent investigation into how it “ignored” their suffering until a high-profile man, Jeremy Vine, became a Belfield target.