Golf captain ‘groped me as he bought me champagne’

A GOLF club captain accused of a string of sexual assaults told a young woman she was ‘gorgeous’ and groped her as he bought her champagne, a court heard.

Malcolm Fawcett, 57, has been accused of attacks on four women at Brancepeth Castle Golf Club, near Durham.

One of the complainants told jurors yesterday that he had groped her in an upmarket bar after buying her champagne.

She met the ex-police officer at the Champagne Bar in Durham, having known him from the golf club.

She said Fawcett bought champagne for her and other women, but added ‘that doesn’t give him the right to do what he did’.

‘I had been asked to help get drinks from the bar and he was beside me,’ she said. ‘I felt his hand running down my back and over my backside. I felt quite uncomfortable, I still remember it.’

She added: ‘I was wearing a dress and his hand went over the middle of my back, over my shoulder blades and right down to my bottom. I didn’t say anything, I didn’t want to cause a scene.’

The woman said she had been wary of Fawcett because in 2016 he had asked to drive her home from the golf club and had made an unwelcome comment.

She said: ‘He made a comment that I was f****** gorgeous. He grabbed my leg as he said it. I tried to push him off, I didn’t know what to do. I got him to drop me off at my gym because I didn’t want him to know where I lived.’ The woman denied a suggestion from Caroline Goodwin, QC, defending Fawcett, that she had been ‘fishing for compliments’.

Miss Goodwin said the complainant posted on social media about ‘looking and feeling good’, adding: ‘You were fishing for compliments, you were saying your legs were big and not looking so good.’

The woman replied: ‘I wasn’t trying to get compliments from him.’

She added that the management spoke to Fawcett about his behaviour around women after numerous complaints were made to the club.

‘At first things got better after that, but there was an incident at the bar on a quiz night where he apologised in advance in case he did anything after he’d had a drink. How was I supposed to take that?’ the complainant added.

It has already been alleged in court that Fawcett put his hand into a woman’s T- shirt and between her breasts to warm up after coming in from the golf course.

She also told how Fawcett twice simulated sex with her as she bent to pick something up in the clubhouse.

Jurors have been told that women at the club thought Fawcett was ‘creepy’ but his role as its captain meant he was considered too ‘influential’ to make a complaint in the early stages of his two-year campaign of sexual assault.

Fawcett, from Framwellgate Moor, near Durham, denies 11 charges of sexual assault from January 2016 until January last year.

Five of the charges relate to one of Fawcett’s four alleged victims, while there are three against another, two charges for the third woman and one charge in connection with the final alleged victim.

The trial, which is at Teesside Crown Court, continues.

‘I didn’t want to cause a scene’