Witness insists she’s told truth about attacks at Bute House
A FORMER Scottish Government official who has accused Alex Salmond of attempted rape has rejected claims that the incidents did not happen.
The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, has spoken about two alleged incidents, including one charge that the 65-year-old tried to rape her in June 2014.
Shelagh McCall, QC, representing Salmond, yesterday put it to the prosecution witness that the attempted rape did not happen.
The lawyer also argued during crossexamination that email communication before the alleged incident was evidence that it had not occurred.
The witness, known as Ms H, said: ‘I wish for my life that were true but that’s not. I wish the [former] First Minister had been nicer and a better man and I weren’t here.’
She had told the court on Monday she felt ‘hunted’ by Salmond moments before the alleged attempted rape at Bute House.
The court heard he stripped himself naked, removed most of her clothing, pushed her on the bed and assaulted her.
Mrs McCall asked why Ms H had not called for a security guard to help that night, or left the premises sooner.
Ms H said: ‘I wish that I stood up and decked him but I didn’t, I wish I had run but I didn’t – I was in panic.’
She said she had ‘wanted to deal with it privately – because the whole thing was horrible – as we often did with Alex’s behaviour’.
Ms H added: ‘I just absolutely froze. I was screaming on the inside but not on the outside.’
The other sexual assault allegation in relation to Ms H is said to have taken place at Bute House in May 2014 after a meal there.
But Mrs McCall said diary accounts for Bute House showed there was not an occasion the witness could have been at Bute House for dinner in May 2014.
The jury also heard that her client had not been at the residence on the evening of 20 dates that month.
Ms H rejected the claim, saying just because she was not there for a dinner did not mean she had not been at the property.
Mrs McCall had earlier asked whether Ms H had been encouraged by others to speak to Police Scotland after reports emerged in August 2018 that Salmond was being investigated.
The court heard Ms H had been in contact with a number of people before talking to police. She said: ‘There’s no one cheerleading me to do this.
‘This isn’t fun, I would rather not be here.
‘I don’t feel like I have been encouraged, I feel I have made this decision on my own.’
After an article appeared in a newspaper, detailing allegations about Salmond, Ms H said she had contacted a senior official in the Scottish Government, who cannot be named for legal reasons.
She sent the woman a text message because she was trying to ‘figure out’ what she should do next about her own case.
Asked why she had contacted her, Ms H said: ‘Just because there was a police investigation, I did not know what former staff members should do if they happened to be part of government, or aware that incidents had taken place.
‘I didn’t know the full detail of this – I had never done this before, this was new to me. I was finding my feet.’
The court also heard about an exchange of text messages in
August 2018 between Ms H and a party employee, in which Ms H said she had a ‘plan’.
She said: ‘I’m mulling too. But I have a plan. And means we can be anonymous but see strong repercussions.’
Challenged on what she meant, Ms H said she and the party employee ‘had discussed in the past issues around Mr Salmond’s behaviour’.
It was also heard that Ms H had been in contact with someone in 2015 about a personal project, in which she said she would work with Salmond again, around a year after the alleged sexual assaults were said to have taken place.
Mrs McCall asked whether the witness was ‘angry’ with her client for not helping, but this was denied.
Ms H said she was in ‘total shock’, and there was no ‘universal code’ for how victims of sex crime should react.
Mrs McCall put to Ms H that she had read Salmond’s book, The Dream Shall Never Die, in between making statements to police.
She suggested this was how Ms H had established that an actor had been at Bute House on the date of the alleged attempted rape.
But Ms H said she had never read the book apart from looking up her own name in the index, because the book was ‘widely considered as a joke’.
She added: ‘I did not need to relive the [independence referendum] campaign through his version of it.’
Salmond denies all of the charges against him.
‘I wish I had run but I didn’t – I was in panic’