The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Alex Salmond sexual assault trial: Day 2
Witness tells of flashbacks brought on by Weinstein case Woman too ‘scared’ to report alleged assaults until years later
A former Scottish Government official who has accused Alex Salmond of attempting to rape her said she suffered flashbacks following the Harvey Weinstein case.
The former first minister is on trial at the High Court in Edinburgh over multiple accusations of sexual assault.
The first woman to give evidence in the trial said Salmond twice attacked her – a sexual assault in May 2014 and the rape attempt a month later.
In her second day of evidence the witness, known as Woman H, told the court she began to have flashbacks due to the worldwide MeToo movement, denouncing sexual impropriety by men against women.
She said: “I had started to learn about (the MeToo movement), yes. It was just around that time.
“It was on the back of the Harvey
Weinstein case.
“These issues started to be discussed and I started to have what I could describe as flashbacks.
“I started to come to the realisation at the October-November 2017 period.”
The woman had previously told the court she felt “hunted” by Salmond moments before an alleged attempted rape in Bute House.
It is claimed the incident took place after a dinner at the first minister’s official residence.
She said Salmond began touching her and then blocked her exit when she tried to leave the room.
She said he then pursued her through the official residence until he caught up with her in a bedroom, stripped her and himself naked and lay on top of her.
She had been there to confront him about the first alleged incident, in which she claims Salmond laughed as he groped her at Bute House after an official dinner.
She said she was initially “scared” to come forward, describing the former SNP leader as a “powerful man”
The court heard on the day following the alleged assault, the witness was scheduled to attend an event with the first minister and former SNP politician Tasmina Ahmed Sheikh.
However, she cancelled on the first minister.
She added: “I was humiliated and I was in shock still. I didn’t process what had happened.”
She said Salmond phoned her and asked her to come saying it would be a “grand day out” but she did not go.
Woman H added: “I didn’t communicate to anyone that I had been assaulted. I asked a friend and a colleague if anything had ever happened to her because I was trying to figure out whether this was a one off like a drunken mistake due to the pressure of the campaign and he had just gone off the rails.
“I was trying to make sense of what on earth had happened. I didn’t go into the details of it.”
In cross-examination by Shelagh McCall QC, representing the 65-yearold accused, Woman H was asked why she had not just called a security guard at Bute House and asked him to put Salmond to bed during the second alleged incident.
She replied she wished she had and added: “You have to remember our job was to protect him as well.”
“I didn’t fully understand what was happening to me.
“This was a man who was often aggressive and bullying and was now forcefully trying it on with me over what felt like a long period.
“I wanted to deal with it privately, as we often did with Alex’s behaviour.”
The woman said she wished she had stood up and “decked him”, but did not.
Woman H alleges the attempted rape happened on June 13 in Bute House following a dinner with Salmond.
However, Mrs McCall suggested that she was never at the function – and that she had only learned of the event by reading Salmond’s book, The Dream Shall Never Die.
Woman H replied: “I wish for my life this was not true. I wish for my life I was not here (in court) today. I wish for my life the first minister had been nice and a better man.”
The former government official added she had not read Salmond’s book, saying it was considered a “joke”.
The woman said that during the alleged sex attack she “just absolutely froze”.
She said: “I was screaming on the inside but not on the outside.”
Salmond is accused of sexually assaulting Woman H and attempting to rape her in 2014 in Bute House.