Captain ‘sexually assaulted’ Army colleague as she slept

AN ARMY officer who accused a senior colleague of sexual assault says she told him she was “not in the sport” of having sex with people she worked with, a court martial heard.

Captain Thomas Harding, 31, allegedly convinced the female officer to share a bed with him while on a training course together, and then touched her intimately while she slept.

The woman had initially refused to take off her trousers, calling them “her human condom” but eventually did and got into bed with her back to him.

Capt Harding claimed that while they were in bed he believed she was consenting. But Miss Lisa Goddard, prosecuting, told the court the woman had not consented.

Capt Harding and the alleged victim had met nearly four weeks previously at the Defence Intelligence and Security Centre, in Chicksands, Beds.

The pair were talking outside her room after a fancy dress party, Bulford Military Court in Wiltshire was told. In a military police interview played to the court, she said: “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 s------g people I work with.

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

A few days later the pair were drinking and talking in the woman’s bedroom when Capt Harding stripped down to his boxer shorts, the court heard.

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 ’.

“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 woman alleges she woke to find Capt Harding touching her intimately.

“I said to him ‘what are you doing?’ and pushed him off,” she told the court.

She added: “In my mind we weren’t sleeping together that night, we weren’t going to be sleeping together on that course.”

Capt Harding denies two counts of sexual assault. The trial continues.