Being groped was like ‘octopus experience’: banker
A YOUNG investment banker has told a court that being allegedly groped by a multimillionaire hedge fund manager was “like an octopus experience”.
Crispin Odey, 62, is on trial at Hendon Magistrates’ Court, where he denies indecently assaulting the woman, then 26, at his home in Chelsea, west London, in summer 1998.
The court has heard that he ordered a Chinese takeaway, then showered and changed out of his suit into a robe before assaulting her in his kitchen.
She said he put his hand down her shirt to touch her breast and reached up her skirt, after inviting her back to his house following a work meeting at his office in Grosvenor Square.
Married Odey, who has a home in the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire and was 39 at the time, claims he propositioned the woman, who was a junior employee at a wellknown investment bank of which he was a client, but denies any physical contact.
Under cross-examination by Crispin Aylett QC, defending, the complainant said yesterday: “He was next to me. It was sort of like an octopussy-type manoeuvre.
“The first thing I remember was actually on my back. Then, it was like a scramble of hands, it was like a groping event, is the only way to describe it.
“I referred to it like an octopus experience, this physical engagement. I don’t remember the exact choreography.”
Mr Aylett said: “Or is it the case this didn’t happen at all and that’s why you can’t remember the choreography?”
The woman replied: “Well we disagree on that.”
She also disagreed when the barrister said: “I’m suggesting to you that Crispin Odey didn’t touch you in any way at all in a sexual sense inside the house at Swan Walk.”
Another colleague said to have been at the meeting said he had “no recollection” but added that Odey, with whom he still has a professional relationship, is “nothing but a complete gentleman”.
“He’s a very open person. Controversial but certainly honest and honourable,” he said.
The trial continues.