The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
‘He was kissing me around my face, quite sloppily...’
Scottish Government official claims she had to protect Salmond for referendum
A woman allegedly sexually assaulted by Alex Salmond said reporting him to police would have been “unthinkable” due to the looming Scottish independence referendum.
Scotland’s former first minister is accused of assaulting the woman at the official residence, Bute House, in 2013, around nine months before the vote.
The complainer, a civil servant known as Woman F, said she was concerned any police proceedings might get into the “public sphere”. She said: “That would have been unthinkable, partly because of the political context.
“Our job involved protecting the first minister and his reputation.”
She added: “Going to anyone outside seemed completely unthinkable.
“This was a run-up to a referendum on independence, everything we did outward-facing had potential ramifications.”
The woman told the High Court in Edinburgh that one evening at Bute House he got on top of her on a bed, kissed her “sloppily and haphazardly” and murmured she was irresistible.
Woman F said the pair had been working one evening in late 2013 when Salmond said they should go to his bedroom for work as it was cold.
He brought out a bottle of a spirits. The witness added: “I had a little, the first minister had had rather more.”
When she got up to leave, she said Salmond told her “firmly” but not “aggressively” to get on the bed.
She said: “I felt quite panicked, this was very much within a working environment and culture where we do whatever it is that the first minister asks of you.”
After sitting on the edge of the bed, the woman said Salmond got on top of her and began to kiss and touch her and murmured that she was “irresistible”.
She added: “I don’t recall exactly what happened for those first few seconds but then I was lying with my feet, I think, still on the ground but lying across the foot of the bed.
“The first minister was lying on top of me, he had his hands under the skirt of my dress and ran them over my thighs and my bottom. He was also running his hands over the bodice of my dress and over my breasts.
“He was kissing me around my face, quite sloppily and haphazardly, and he was repeatedly murmuring a phrase – it was something like ‘you’re irresistible’.”
The woman said when Salmond was on top of her she thought he was going to “take things further”.
She added: “That there would be progression, progression in the sense of trying to remove his own clothes or taking things further.
“For example, I thought that he was going to remove my tights and my underwear, that he would be pushing the encounter physically further.”
The Scottish Government official, who is the fourth complainer to give evidence, said she reported the incident to fellow civil service colleagues the same week and Salmond apologised.
They agreed to continue to work together
Gordon Jackson QC, representing Salmond, suggested it had been a “sleepy cuddle”.
He said: “He didn’t try to restrain you, he didn’t block your path to the door, he never said ‘please don’t go’. It was clear this wasn’t happening. You leave and he said ‘goodnight’.”
The woman said Salmond had kissed her on a past occasion at Bute House.
Mr Jackson described the accused as a “tactile human being”.
The trial continues.