Husband of murdered MP was sex pest
THE husband of murdered English MP Jo Cox last night admitted to being a sex pest – and quit two charities he set up in her name.
Weeping openly, Brendan Cox apologised for the ‘hurt and offence’ he has caused to women, and said he was ‘deeply apologetic’ for his behaviour.
In a highly emotional interview with the MoS, he announced his immediate resignation from the Jo Cox Foundation and More In Common – the charities he launched in memory of his wife.
His confession came as the Mail uncovered shocking new details of a second sexual assault he allegedly committed.
The accusation relates to his time with Save The Children in the year before his wife was killed by a farright fanatic during the 2016 Brexit campaign.
It is claimed Mr Cox drunkenly harassed a female employee at the charity in London, forcing her against a wall outside a bar, holding her by the throat and telling her: ‘I want to f*** you.’
The incident led to him being forced to leave the charity in 2015. Save The Children’s chief executive Justin Forsyth, a close friend of Mr Cox and former aide to Prime Minister Gordon Brown, resigned four months later.
Astonishingly, one month after Mr Cox left the charity, a senior female US government official told police Mr Cox had carried out a similar alleged assault on her at Harvard University.
In another development, it emerged yesterday Mr Forsyth was also the subject of a complaint by a female employee. It related to an ‘inappropriate comment’ he allegedly made. The complaint was investigated and said to have been resolved ‘by consensus’.
Insiders insist Mr Forsyth’s subsequent departure from the charity had nothing to do with the complaint against him, nor the handling of the Cox scandal. Mr Forsyth was then appointed deputy executive director of Unicef in New York, a post he still holds.
A Save The Children source said: ‘Brendan and Justin were a formidable double act. But they were too big for their boots.’
The disclosures will fuel the current controversy over charity sex scandals and cover-ups.
Mr Cox said in a statement: ‘I accept I have made mistakes, behaved badly and caused some women hurt and offence. I take responsibility for what I have done. I apologise unreservedly for my past behaviour and am committed to holding myself to much higher standards of personal conduct in the future.’ It marks a fall from grace for Mr Cox, who has won praise for the way he focused on bringing up his and his wife’s two young children and thrown himself into charitable work. He says that he is determined to end his ‘deeply inappropriate’ behaviour.