Sex-toy aide taunts MP with festive photo stunt
SHE is one of the most high-profile victims of alleged sexual harassment in the House of Commons. But Caroline Edmondson, who was nicknamed ‘ sugar t** s’ by Tory MP Mark Garnier and asked by him to buy two sex toys in a Soho shop, seems to have made light of her tribulations.
Despite having once claimed that Garnier ‘ destroyed my life’, the Commons secretary has sent out a Christmas card to friends which makes explicit and playful reference to her involvement in the sexism controversy.
In her festive card, she poses with her partner, Sky News’s Jon Craig, in front of a Christmas tree decorated with baubles.
Wearing a Santa apron, she is photographed holding a box of icing sugar up to her chest while he is stirring a bowl of kitchen mix above the caption: ‘ Let’s cause a stir this Christmas.’
From her broad, cheeky grin you would hardly say that Caroline looks like a victim.
In October, it emerged that International Trade Minister Garnier gave Edmondson cash to buy two vibrators when she worked for him in 2010. Edmondson said the ex-banker told her one was for his wife, also called Caroline, and the other for a female assistant.
Married father- of-three Garnier, who is being investigated by the Cabinet Office, described the incident as ‘high jinks’ and denied that the shopping trip was sexual harassment.
He said the trip had happened after a Christmas lunch and had
been taken ‘out of context’ because ‘ at the time we were friends’. He said the ‘sugar t**s’ comment was part of an ‘amusing conversation’ referring to the TV sitcom Gavin & Stacey.
Edmondson stopped working for Garnier after the incident and now works for ex- Cabinet Secretary John Whittingdale MP. Friends of Edmondson urged her to sue Garnier after he claimed the incident wasn’t as bad as it looked because they were friends.
She said in October: ‘I was really upset and I’m still upset about it. I find myself crying about it however many years later.
‘He destroyed my life, that’s just fact. It was absolutely horrible.’