Army police captain sexually assaulted sleeping colleague

A ROYAL Military Police officer has been jailed for sexually assaulting a junior colleague as she slept.

Capt Thomas Harding, 31, had persuaded the woman, who rejected his attempts to seduce her at a fancy-dress party days earlier, to share a bed with him while on a training course.

He removed her trousers and twice touched her intimately as she slept.

He was yesterday dismissed from the Army and jailed for 15 months after being convicted of two counts of sexual assault. He was also placed on the sex offenders’ register for 10 years.

Harding and his victim, who cannot be named for legal reasons, met a few weeks before the incident at Chicksands, Beds, the Defence Intelligence and Security Centre.

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

The victim 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.”

A few days later, they were drinking in the victim’s bedroom before deciding to go to sleep there, at which point Harding stripped to his boxer shorts.

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 sexually assaulting her. She said: “I thought maybe I had been dreaming and maybe I had imagined it. At that point I should have told him to leave.”

A second assault followed. She said: “I just could not work out what was happening. I said to him, ‘What are you doing?’ and pushed him off.

“I think past the possibility of doubt I had made it clear to him that I did not want a sexual relationship.”