Chemist did ‘sex act with lolly and pinged bum with rubber band’
COURT HEARS CLAIMS ABOUT PHARMACIST Witness tells trial she was harassed in the workplace
A CHEMIST played the theme tune to raunchy movie Fifty Shades of Grey and simulated a sex act with a Fruit Pastilles ice lolly in the shop where he worked, a court heard yesterday.
Jamie Christie, 33, has also been accused of assault by pinging a woman’s buttocks with a rubber band.
The pharmacy dispenser faces charges of making sexualised and inappropriate comments, gestures and noises at Bannerman’s in Dunblane, Stirlingshire, between June 2017 and September last year.
A 26-year-old woman – who says she witnessed the ice lolly incident – told Stirling Sheriff Court: “He was just pushing it in and out of his mouth, trying to simulate oral sex. “He was that brazen.” The court heard that Christie, who had worked for “years” in the pharmacy, was the subject of an internal inquiry after a series of incidents – including one in which he told colleagues that one of the customers was “a porn star” – and then sacked.
The court heard claims that on one occasion, he pulled up his trousers and put his foot on a kick-stool in front of a female worker before “wiping moisturising cream up and down his leg”.
The witness, giving evidence from behind a screen, said: “It was a slow gesture, up and down. He would groan and moan, and grind against the corners of walls and benches.
“He was trying to mimic noises of a sexual gratification nature.”
She said Christie had “smirked” and used “a creepy, suggestive tone” to her, saying: “Oh baby, you’re a naughty girl.”
The court heard he also once said to her: “Do tell me. It’s all about girth, it’s nothing to do with length?”
She said: “He was talking about a penis. I’d tell him to shut up and get away from me. He’d just laugh.”
The woman, who cannot be identified, told prosecutor Gail Russell that Christie had said to her on three or four occasions: “After you, Miss Steele.” She said she hadn’t realised what he meant at first but then he played the soundtrack to the 2015 erotic movie Fifty Shades of Grey. She said: “Then I realised the main character in Fifty Shades of Grey was called Miss Steele and that’s what he was making reference to. It made me feel horrible.”
Deputy fiscal Russell said to presiding sheriff Wyllie Robertson: “I’m not sure it’s in judicial knowledge, the book Fifty Shades of Grey?” The veteran sheriff – the longest serving member of the Stirling bench – replied: “I think you have to assume it’s not.”
In answer to further questioning from Miss Russell, the female witness told Sheriff Robertson: “It’s well known as an erotic book. It’s part of popular culture. The movie is all about a man and woman getting together.”
The woman said she told Christie he had “gone too far” after he flicked her buttocks with an elastic band.
She said: “He intentionally took aim and pinged my bum.
“There was an internal investigation in the pharmacy and it became obvious I was not the only one experiencing it.”
Christie, of Dunblane, denies two charges of making sexualised and inappropriate comments, gestures and noises at the pharmacy, and one charge alleging the non-sexual assault of one of them by “pinging” her buttocks with the rubber band.
Defence solicitor Virgil Crawford said what Christie had been engaging in was “banter”.
He put it to the witness: “Other people in the shop also engaged in these kind of comments, didn’t they?”
She replied: “Yes, but not all the time.”
The trial will continue on another date.
He intentionally took aim and pinged my bum
WITNESS WHO CLAIMED CHRISTIE FIRED AN ELASTIC BAND AT HER