‘Labour MP’s adviser raped intern aged 19’

Party accused of cover-up over string of sex claims

A FORMER Parliamentary intern has accused a ‘highprofile’ adviser to a Labour MP of drugging and raping her when she was 19.

She said she had woken up in the man’s bed with no memory of what had happened to her.

The allegation came in an investigation by the Financial Times involving 30 former parliamentary members of staff.

According to the FT, the intern said she had started working at an MP’s office before encountering a ‘high-profile’ adviser who was nine years her senior.

He had invited her to drinks with other colleagues, but when she arrived it was just the two of them, she told the paper.

‘He handed me a drink before he started to talk about how influential he was and how he could help introduce me to people,’ she said.

‘I didn’t know what to do but I refused another drink and then he asked me if I wanted some cocaine. I’d never done drugs, so he went off and did some coke before coming tumbling back in.

‘I don’t know what happened but I woke up in his bed.’ She said he told her she’d got a bit drunk before adding: ‘You don’t know what I did to you last night.’

‘He was insinuating he’d raped me,’ she said. ‘It was harassment, it was disgusting and it was vile. I wish I’d gone to somebody but I just told him not to come close to me ever again.’

She said she had not reported the incident, which happened two decades ago, and became ‘nauseous’ when she saw him on television. The newspaper also quoted the director of a Labour think-tank comparing the party’s approach to the Catholic Church’s cover-up of paedophile priests.

Richard Angell, director of the centrist Labour group Progress, said: ‘I’m afraid I fear that the Labour Party now behaves as the Catholic Church once did – protecting the reputation of the institution over the safety of the individual.’

Other claims include one by a volunteer at a local Labour constituency office who says she was sexually assaulted by an organiser. A man who allegedly witnessed the incident told her people ‘do strange things during elections – don’t take it further’, which she didn’t. Another woman quit her job as a researcher for a Tory MP when he allegedly sexually harassed her.

He said he regularly told her about other researchers he had slept with in the office and made jokes about her masturbating.

An MP’s assistant, who still works in Parliament, claimed a fellow staffer thrust his crotch in her face and asked her to comment on the ‘girth’ of his penis. When she raised a complaint, she was told to take compassionate leave and was relocated.

Several male staffers raised allegations against gay MPs. One was a 17-year-old on work experience who a male MP took to the Carlton Club before inviting him back to his constituency home.

A cross-party working group of MPs and staff is overseeing new powers to suspend MPs if they are found to have harassed parliamentary staff. Both Labour and the Conservatives said they took all allegations of sexual harassment extremely seriously and urged victims to complain.