I’m no aggressive sexual monster, says John Leslie
And being falsely accused of Ulrika rape was my Armageddon... I was suicidal, he tells jury
JOHN Leslie fought back tears s yesterday as he denied grabbing a woman’s breasts at a party, saying: : ‘I have never sexually assaulted d anybody – it’s not in my nature.’
The former Blue Peter star, who is s accused of sexually assaulting the e woman at a party in a London bar in n December 2008, said the claim was s ‘ludicrous’, adding that stories of him being an ‘aggressive sexual monster’ had left him suicidal.
The former presenter said he had become e afraid to go near women after being named d on television in 2002 as the man who raped d TV star Ulrika Jonsson.
The unsubstantiated allegation, which he e denies, led to the end of his career. Leslie, , 55, described the fallout as ‘Armageddon’.
He said: ‘I became reclusive and suicidal. . I lost everything after that. I wouldn’t go o anywhere. I lost my financial income, I lost t the house I built, I lost my life.
‘I was going to take my life to stop this s happening because I wanted to protect t my parents.
‘I got to the point of the tree and the rope and the park’.
But Leslie said he decided instead to ‘try and get my life back’ and started socialising again. ‘I was paranoid. When I did go out, I was just aware I would never go near women because of what had been said, because people thought I was that type of character’, he said.
He told Southwark Crown Court that he recalled spending most of the celebrity Christmas party where the alleged assault took place talking to Big Brother star Jade Goody, three months before she died of cervical cancer.
He said: ‘I wouldn’t do anything deliberately to hurt anyone. I’ve never done that.’
With his voice breaking, Leslie told jurors: ‘I’ve been brought up correctly. My mum and dad taught ht me right i ht from f wrong. I’m I’ a larger-than-life person. I’m quite gregarious and happy and if that’s been misinterpreted, then...I’m tactile, yes, I hug people, but not sexually. I’m not an aggressive sexual monster the tabloids made me out to be.’
The court heard that he went to the party that night because there were lots of celebrities there. But he does not recall what happened at the party, or meeting the alleged victim.
‘If I’d been going anywhere public, it would have been a quite a special night,’ Leslie said. ‘There would be lots of other celebrities there, other presenters.
‘I would have gone as it was a friendly crowd and I would have liked to have seen people I’d not seen in a long time.’
Referring to the alleged victim, he added: ‘I have no idea who she is. There was no reason to speak to her or meet her.
‘The idea that I would do that is just crazy, especially the way that I was with everything that had been going on.
‘I was paranoid, I was aware and conscious of wherever I was. To go up to a total stranger I had never met and do that is just ludicrous.
‘I would have said hello, I would have talked to her. I would not have touched her like some mannequin and walked off.’
Earlier the court heard that the defendant was ‘known to touch people inappropriately’ and one witness claimed: ‘If someone
‘I have no idea who she is’
at a party squeezed your bottom, it is more than likely to be John Leslie.’
A woman at the same party claimed Leslie had ‘on occasion’ squeezed her bottom.
She told police that she was ‘disappointed’ when the alleged victim came over during the Christmas party to report that Leslie had groped her. The court also heard from another guest at the event who said a friend of Leslie’s had apologised after the alleged attack, saying the former TV star was just ‘over-excited’.
One of his entourage is alleged to have said: ‘It has been a long time since he has been at a party like this. He gets over-excited and goes over the top.’
Leslie denies sexual assault. The trial continues.