Ex-MP said ‘we’re all at it’ after sex assault, court told
FORMER British Conservative MP Charlie Elphicke told a young parliamentary worker “I’m so naughty sometimes” after sexually assaulting her, a court has heard.
The married father-of-two is alleged to have made the comment after he shared a bottle of Champagne with the woman, in her early 20s, in Westminster in 2016.
The woman said she was invited for a drink with the then-Dover MP one evening, and they chatted about music before he later slipped his hand under her top.
An extract of her police interview was played to jurors in Mr Elphicke’s sexual assault trial at Southwark Crown Court yesterday.
In the recording, the woman, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, said Mr Elphicke repeatedly told her he liked her.
She told police: “He said, ‘I really do like you, you know’.
“I thought, ‘F***, what’s happening?’ It all happened so fast.”
The woman said Mr Elphicke then put his arm down her top to grope her.
She told police: “He said, ‘What’s wrong? We both really like each other’.”
The witness said she was not attracted to him and told Mr Elphicke he was much older than her, to which he allegedly replied: “I knew you’d bring my age into it.”
She said Elphicke, now 49, began giggling after the sexual assault and said: “I’m so naughty sometimes.”
She also told police of a second alleged assault, later in 2016, when Mr Elphicke slid his hand up her leg to her groin. The woman said she told him to stop, to which Mr Elphicke tutted and replied: “You’re no fun.”
She told police she had heard Mr Elphicke say previously: “People in my good books go a long way. People in my bad books don’t.”
She added: “The message I was getting was, ‘Don’t piss me off ’.”
Earlier, the court heard that Mr Elphicke told another woman “we’re all at it” after sexually assaulting her in his home.
The woman’s brother told jurors his sister was “hysterical” and “could hardly get her words out” when she phoned him to tell him what had happened. The alleged incident took place at Mr Elphicke’s family home in central London in 2007, three years before he was elected to parliament.
The court heard that Mr Elphicke, who was 36 at the time, tried to kiss the woman then groped her breast and chased her around his home while trying to grab her bottom. His wife Natalie was away while his children were upstairs asleep, the jury was told.
The brother told the court: “She said he [Elphicke] was saying, ‘I’m a naughty Tory, we’re all at it’.
“She was upset. She found it hard to give a systematic account. She said she was ‘attacked’, she was ‘assaulted’, words like that.
“She indicated it was a sexual assault, he tried to grope her in sexual places and tried to kiss her. She told me she pushed him away.”
Defence counsel Ian Winter said the brother’s police statement, taken a decade later, made no mention of the phrase “we’re all at it”, and suggested it was a detail added to his account following conversations with his sister.
The witness denied this. Mr Elphicke denies three counts of sexual assault.
The trial continues.