6 shares 37 View comments Barbara Hewson is now advocating reducing the age of consent to 13 to 'end the persecution of old men' Barbara Hewson is a distinguished civil liberties barrister. She’s championed the rights of women and the disabled, among other important causes. So it is all the more astonishing that she is now advocating reducing the age of consent to 13 to ‘end the persecution of old men’. She made her comments in light of what she calls the ‘post-Savile witch-hunting of ageing celebs’, which she says has echoes of persecution in the old Soviet Union. Ms Hewson, 52, even went as far as to claim that sports pundit and presenter Stuart Hall’s sex crimes were low-level misdemeanours, despite the serial sex offender admitting to 14 assaults, one on a girl of nine. It is unclear whether Ms Hewson is married or has children, yet surely if she did have a 13-year-old daughter she would fight like a lioness to protect her from predatory men, let alon