Barry George, who spent eight years wrongly imprisoned for the murder of BBC presenter Jill Dando before being cleared, is due to face trial on charges of raping a schoolgirl in the 1980s. The case returns George to public attention decades after his wrongful conviction became one of Britain's most notable miscarriages of justice, and will renew scrutiny of his history with the law as this separate, unrelated allegation proceeds through the courts.

Specific details of the rape charge, including the timeline of the alleged offence and the trial date, were not available in the source material. George was convicted in 2001 of murdering Dando, the Crimewatch presenter shot dead outside her London home in 1999, but had his conviction quashed in 2007 after a retrial found him not guilty, following an eight-year term in prison.