‘I felt his finger inside me…’

A BRITISH Army intelligence officer has been jailed for sexually assaulting a junior officer while she slept.

Captain Thomas Harding, 31, dubbed his victim a “spoilsport” because she refused to kiss him and later removed her trousers and twice touched her intimately as she slept.

Harding had convinced his colleague to share a bed with him while on a training course together, having unsuccessfully tried to seduce her at a pirate- themed fancy dress party days before.

The disgraced officer was dismissed from the Army and jailed for 15 months after being convicted of two counts of sexual assault.

Harding and his victim had met around three and a half weeks before the incident at Chicksands, Beds, home of the British Army Intelligence Corps.

Bulford Military Court, Wilts, heard the pair were at a pirate- themed fancy dress party hosted by the Royal Navy as part of the tri- service course when he first tried to seduce her.

After the bar closed, Harding went upstairs and was talking to the alleged victim outside the door to her room.

The victim, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said: “After a while he came towards me and tried to kiss me and I laughed it off and essentially told him I am not in the sport of shagging people I work with.

“I basically said ‘ begone sir, begone’ and I think he made a joke about me being such a spoilsport or something like that.”

BASE BEHAVIOUR: Harding rubbed his victim’s vagina at Chicksands Army Intelligence base

In the morning there was no ill feeling between the pair and they went out with another friend to a nearby Wagamama’s to ‘ cure their hangovers’.

A few days later, they were among a group drinking in the bar again before a blackout cut their evening short and some decided to carry on drinking in the victim’s bedroom.

She, two RAF officers and Harding, played cards, drank Corona and Sauvignon Blanc and talked into the early hours before the RAF officers both left.

The pair then carried on drinking and talking before deciding to go to sleep, at which point Harding stripped down to his underwear and tried to convince the victim to do likewise.

She said: “He said ‘ why don’t you take your jeans off?’ and I replied, ‘ because at this point they are basically like a human condom – I’m not taking them off’.

“I wasn’t fearful, I just didn’t really want to take them off.

“He took them off playfully and although I had said no, I didn’t think it was anything malicious at that point.”

After falling asleep the junior officer woke to find Harding ‘ rubbing’ her vagina.

She said: “I remember turning around and being like ‘ what are you doing?’.

“I thought maybe I had been dreaming and maybe I had imagined it. At that point I should have told him to leave.

“I fell asleep again and the next time I woke up I felt his finger inside me.”

Harding argued the victim had “instigated sexual contact by grinding sexually against him”.