I had flashbacks over Weinstein case, Salmond accuser tells trial
■ Accuser tells trial how image of former First Minister ‘will probably last forever’ ■ Court hears she felt ‘humiliated by his actions, scared and embarrassed by them’
A WOMAN who has accused Alex Salmond of attempted rape said she suffered ‘flashbacks’ after hearing about Harvey Weinstein.
The former Scottish Government official – referred to as Ms H – said she became aware of the Me Too movement after the Weinstein case.
It triggered ‘flashbacks’ to the alleged attack by Salmond at Bute House in Edinburgh.
Ms H said the details of the June 2014 incident were like ‘flashes in [her] memories’, adding: ‘I have distressing images that replay in my mind over and over and over again.’
And in further testimony she alleged that Salmond was ‘often aggressive’ and ‘often bullying’ – but part of her job had been to ‘protect’ him.
Salmond is on trial at the High Court in Edinburgh over 14 alleged sexual offences against ten women.
The 65-year-old, of Strichen, Aberdeenshire, has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Salmond has entered ‘special defences’ for some of the charges, claiming the alleged victims had consented, and has also submitted an alibi plea for one charge.
On the first day of the trial on Monday, Ms H claimed Salmond had ‘pounced’ on her, stripping her and taking his own clothes off.
She said Salmond, then First Minister, had been entertaining an independence-supporting actor at a ‘thank you’ dinner.
Ms H claimed Salmond had told her he would be a ‘great lover’ as he tried to force himself on her.
The alleged attempted rape happened in a bedroom known as the ‘Connery room’ because Sean Connery had stayed there in 2007.
Adding to her account yesterday, Ms H said Salmond’s private parts were pressed on hers during the alleged attack.
Later, she said that at the end of the incident Salmond was naked, but added: ‘I remember him having his socks on.’ Ms H said: ‘I have an image in my memory which will probably last forever.’
During the incident, she said her bra was left ‘dangling from [her wrist]’.
She has told the trial the alleged assault came to an end when Salmond fell asleep and started snoring, allowing her to leave Bute House.
Ms H said the day after the incident she had missed an event she was meant to attend with Salmond and former Nationalist MP Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh.
She said she could not attend because of an injury she had suffered prior to the alleged attack, and said she later received a call from Salmond.
Ms H said he was ‘quite perky’, adding: ‘He did not take the opportunity to discuss what had actually happened the night before.’
Instead he told her to ‘come on’ and ‘come to the football’, telling her: ‘It’s going to be great with me and Taz [sic].’
But Ms H said she was in ‘no shape to go anywhere’ because of the ‘trauma’ of the night before, and she believed she had walked her dog before going to bed.
She said: ‘I had just buried it deep and tried to pretend it didn’t happen.’
Ms H said at first she did not tell anyone about the incident because she was trying to ‘figure out whether this was a one-off’ and a ‘drunken mistake’.
She said: ‘I was trying to make sense of what on earth had happened.’
On a holiday with her then boyfriend she said she told him she thought she was going to speak to the SNP’s headquarters about what had happened, but she did not go into detail in her conversation with him.
Ms H told the court: ‘The First Minister is a very powerful man and I did not want to get on the wrong side of him.’
She started to hear about the Me Too movement following the Weinstein case in October or November 2017.
Ms H said: ‘It was on the back of the Weinstein case that these issues started to be discussed. I started to have what I would describe as flashbacks. I started to come to realisations.’
Advocate depute Alex Prentice, QC, asked if in 2017 the SNP had taken any action regarding the handling of complaints.
Ms H said she did not think there was anything ‘proactively’ done but there was ‘some due diligence’ to ‘figure out whether there was any case of sexual harassment’ within the party.
She had then texted the SNP’s head of compliance or governance, and a series of text exchanges were read out to the court.
In one message, on November 5, 2017, Ms H had texted the party official to tell him the behaviour she wanted to report involved an ex-parliamentary figure, adding: ‘You can guess who.’
He assured her she could speak to him by phone, or text, or email him, or she could talk to a solicitor via the party in the first instance, and her name could be withheld.
Ms H said she was happy to speak to the official and gave him her name, as he did not recognise her mobile number. The following day, he texted her, commenting on her approach to him: ‘Appreciate how difficult that must have been.
‘We will sit on it and hope we never need to deploy it but call me any time if you need to speak further.’
She messaged the official again in August 2018 after a tabloid newspaper printed allegations about Salmond.
Ms H texted: ‘In a selfish way details today make me feel almost relieved. It wasn’t just me and I’m not stupid. It was a systemic pattern.’
He replied: ‘Even more selfishly, I hope others see it and come forward with anything similar. I guess that’s what #MeToo is about.’
The court heard that Ms H did not make a formal complaint to Police Scotland until September 2018.
She said: ‘Prior to saying this outloud, I didn’t know what happened to me was attempted rape. I just knew it was really bad.’
There was a delay as Ms H wanted to find out what would happen to her if a complaint went ahead ‘in the context of Me Too’.
She passed on some information about what she claimed had happened with Salmond in Bute House, but not ‘explicit detail’.
Ms H said: ‘I still had not come to terms with what had happened to me, I just know that I was driven by the fact that I didn’t want anyone else who worked for him [Salmond] to have what happened to me happen to them’. She said this was her ‘overwhelming desire’.
Explaining her motivation, Ms H said: ‘I wanted it to appear on his file, so that that record was there and so that he could be asked about it and taken out of serious consideration in terms of being fit for office.’
She spoke to the party’s lawyer
‘I was trying to make sense of what on earth had happened’
‘I started to have what I’d describe as f lashbacks’
in the summer of 2018, telling her about the events, and later informed police. After allegations about Salmond appeared in a newspaper in August 2018, Ms H told the party official that she was ‘almost relieved’ that what had happened to her was apparently part of what she claimed was a ‘systemic pattern’.
Ms H was asked under cross-examination by defence lawyer Shelagh McCall, QC, about her earlier claim that she did not want to be regarded as ‘one of [Salmond’s] women’.
The witness said: ‘I just felt humiliated by his actions, scared by them, embarrassed by them.’
She added: ‘I did not want anyone to think I was having any kind of physical, emotional or intimate relationship with him.
‘I did not want civil servants or the Scottish Government to gossip about that.’
Ms H was asked how Salmond could have removed his clothes and hers, without giving her an opportunity to ‘step away’.
She said: ‘I just absolutely froze. I was screaming on the inside but not on the outside.’
Ms H was also asked why she had not called for help from the security guards at Bute House. She said: ‘I wish I had. Our job was to protect him as well. I did not fully understand what was happening to me.
‘This was a man who was often aggressive, often bullying’.
The charges span a period between June 29, 2008, and November 11, 2014, with one sexual assault said to have taken place in the month of the Scottish independence referendum in September 2014. Several charges involved the accused allegedly sexually assaulting women, including one incident of attempted rape and another incident at a restaurant in Glasgow in March 2012.
Salmond’s lawyer, Gordon Jackson, QC, lodged a special defence of alibi for an alleged incident in May 2014. Consent was also given as a defence for three alleged sexual assaults and an alleged indecent assault.
The trial continues today.