■ QUEEN’S RELATIVE JAILED FOR CASTLE SEX ASSAULT
THE Queen’s cousin has been jailed for sexually assaulting a woman at his ancestral home.
Simon Bowes-Lyon, 34 – the Earl of Strathmore – attacked his victim during a three-day public relations event at Glamis Castle, childhood home of the Queen Mother.
The woman was in her bedroom when drunken Bowes-Lyon persuaded her to open the door at 1.20am, then barged in, pushed her on the bed and assaulted her.
Afterwards, she locked herself in the room ‘upset and afraid’ and ‘left shaking’ – and wedged a chair under the door handle as he tried to get back in.
She still panics and has nightmares about the 20-minute ordeal a year later, Dundee sheriff court heard yesterday.
Sheriff Alastair Carmichael told Bowes-Lyons: ‘ She made it clear she wanted you to stop.
‘She told you repeatedly she had a boyfriend, repeatedly told you to leave and repeatedly had to keep pushing you away. All of which you ignored.
‘Once she finally managed to eject you from her bedroom, you returned to the door and pleaded with her to let you back in.’
He added: ‘ The amounts of force, aggression and persistence that you used are concerning.’
He said the woman and Bowes-Lyon had spoken during the event but she had ‘no sexual interest in you and had done nothing that could have been interpreted by you to the contrary’.
After pleading guilty at an earlier hearing, Bowes-Lyon said he was ‘greatly ashamed of my actions which caused such distress to a guest in my home’.
He said he had drunk to excess on the night of the attack last February, but added that it was no excuse.
He said: ‘My apologies go above all to the woman concerned but I would like to apologise to family, friends and colleagues for the distress I caused them.’
Bowes-Lyon, who has said he has sought professional help for his behaviour, was jailed for ten months.
Sheriff Carmichael told him: ‘In mitigation, you apologised to her soon after the assault, you expressed remorse, you accepted responsibility, you have no previous convictions and you appear to be otherwise of good character.’
But he said a lesser sentence ‘would not address the gravity of this crime, would not provide an adequate level of punishment, would not express society’s disapproval of such conduct, and would not adequately deter others’.
The earl is the Queen’s first cousin twice removed.