A sex pest, yes, but two years’ jail for MP is a step too far

WHEN the former Tory MP Charlie Elphicke was sentenced to two years in prison for sexual assault, the last person you would have expected to defend him would be his estranged wife Natalie.

Yes the same woman who, 33 minutes after he was convicted, announced she was divorcing the father of their two children after 25 years of marriage, as, she says, the charges against him were intolerable.

His first victim, in her early 30s, said he invited her into their Belgravia home for a drink , kissed her, groped her breast then chased her around the kitchen table, chanting: ‘I’m a naughty Tory.’

The second victim, in her early 20s, said he tried to kiss her, put his hands down her top, then tried to block her exit, saying: ‘I’m so naughty some - times, aren’t I?’

What he did was appalling. So why would Natalie defend him now he’s got his comeuppance — with his career in ruins, penniless, homeless and facing two years in prison?

She found the court ordeal ‘ horrible, humiliating and unpleasant’ but she still believes her husband has suffered ‘a terrible miscarriage of justice’. She is standing by him not in any way to excuse his ghastly behaviour, but simply because she believes — as I, and I suspect many others, do — that two years incar - ceration is too hefty a price to pay for what he did.

Is there not a danger that by inflicting such a heavy punishment on Elphicke, we are in danger of conflating what he did with more serious sexual assaults such as rape?

I cannot help wondering whether , had Elphicke not been a high-profile Tory MP, he would have been treated so harshly. My worry is that this disproportionate punishment feeds into the notion that all women are victims who live in constant fear of sexual assault, and all men villains. We are not, they are not. And a woman such as Natalie Elphicke who stands up against such blatant injustice should be applauded, not pilloried.