He full-on pounced on me… I wish I’d screamed… I curled up in the foetal position… I did not want to be hunted… I was scared
Alleged victim gives evidence on the first day of Salmond trial
A FORMER Scottish Government official has told a court she lay curled up in shock on the floor in Bute House after a drunken Alex Salmond tried to rape her.
The woman said she felt “chased” and “hunted” by the then first minister in his official residence, comparing his constant pursuit and touching to being “in the ring with Muhammad Ali”.
Describing the alleged assault in an upstairs bedroom in June 2014, when one of her arms was incapacitated by a recent fall, she said: “He full-on pounced.”
The woman, known as Woman H, gave evidence from behind a screen at the High Court in Edinburgh on the first day of Mr Salmond’s trial for a series of alleged sex crimes.
She said: “I wish in hindsight I had just screamed or kicked him in the nuts, but I was so frozen I was panicking inside. He would not stop. He was not listening.”
She said Mr Salmond had passed out after trying to have sex with her and she went to another room and waited “till the coast was clear” before leaving by the back door.
She said: “I remember curling up on the floor in the foetal position thinking, ‘Just be quiet. Be really quiet. He will hear you.’ I was scared. I was in shock for a long time after this.”
She said she did not tell anyone about the attack because she did not want the “humiliation” of being thought of as one of Mr Salmond’s
“other women”. She said Mr Salmond also sexually assaulted her in May 2014 by groping her while he was “half cut”, but she thought it a “one-off”.
Mr Salmond, 65, faces 14 charges, all of which he denies.
The alleged incidents date from June 2008 to November 2014 and involve 10 women complainers.
The former SNP leader is accused of one count of attempted rape, one of sexual assault with intent to rape, 10 other counts of sexual assault, and two counts of indecent assault.
Nine charges relate to alleged incidents at Bute House, his former official residence in Edinburgh.
Mr Salmond has lodged a special defence of consent for four charges involving three women and alleged incidents at Bute House between 2010 and 2013.
The jury of nine women and six men heard his defence against one charge of indecent assault, two of sexual assault, and one of sexual assault with intent to rape was he “reasonably believed” the women “to be consenting throughout”.
He also lodged a special defence of alibi against a charge he sexually assaulted Woman H at Bute House in May 2014.
Woman H said she had been working at Bute House in mid-june 2014 on the night Mr Salmond arranged a dinner with the Scots actor Ken Stott, in part to thank him for supporting Yes ahead of the independence referendum.
She said it had been a lovely summer’s night and the company were in the drawing room of Bute
House, overlooking Charlotte Square, with Mr Stott and Mr Salmond enjoying a conversation.
“I just remember that being a nice moment,” she said.
She said that later the atmosphere changed when she and Mr Salmond were alone together.
As the two sat on a sofa in a drawing room in Bute House, she said Mr Salmond pulled her legs on top of his without permission, and she felt as she had around three weeks earlier when the first alleged incident took place.
She said: “I felt inside an internal kind of panic. I felt I had frozen. But I just thought I could talk him out of it.”
She said Mr Salmond then touched her leg and tried to kiss her face and neck, and that she wanted to get away.
“He was on me. I was talking to him the whole time trying to explain why this was not OK.”
She said she then got up and tried to reverse away from him but he persisted.
“I started to feel at that point that I was being chased,” she said.
The woman said Mr Salmond, a “big guy”, then impeded her exit from the room. She said Mr Salmond appeared “titillated by the situation”.
She said she did not want this to happen and had given him no encouragement.
She said Mr Salmond then touched her breast under her bra. “I kept saying, What are you doing? It is not OK. He was just ogling me, saying ‘Come on’. “I think at this point I was scared.” She said the next set of events felt like being “in the ring with Muhammad Ali or [George] Foreman. It was constant. He would not stop pursuing me.”
She said she managed to get away from him “in a lull” then tried to retrieve her belongings from another room upstairs, but Mr Salmond then blocked her exit from it.
She said he asked her to stay over at Bute House, and when she said she was going home, he “became a lot more assertive in his sexual advances”.
She said: “I wish in hindsight I had just screamed or kicked him in the nuts, but I was so frozen I was panicking inside. He would not stop. He was not listening.”
She said she had then agreed to stay over in order to lock herself in a room and call an acquaintance for help.
She said: “I was scared about making him angry. I was trying to talk my way out of the situation.”
However when she went into a bedroom nicknamed the Connery Room because Sir Sean Connery had stayed there overnight in 2007, Mr Salmond had followed her.
She said he talked to her “for a second, then he full-on pounced”.
She said: “He was physically all over me, kissing me, taking my clothes off.”
She said Mr Salmond undressed himself and took most of her clothes off “really fast”. She said Mr Salmond had pushed her backwards on to the bed, and that she had resisted him taking her clothes off, but her injured arm was painful and held her back.
She said Mr Salmond had stood at the foot of bed naked and aroused, then climbed on to the bed and lay on top of her, while she tried to back away.
She said all parts of Mr Salmond’s body touched hers and his stomach was pressing on her. “I felt like I was being hunted,” she said.
She said she then gave a “final push” and managed to push him to one side. She said Mr Salmond was “quite drunk” and kept telling her he would be a “great lover”. She said: “Then he passed out and started snoring.”
She said she had not had any form of sexual relationship with Mr Salmond.
She said: “I did not want to be humiliated. I did not want to be hunted. I did not want any of it to happen.”
She said she was not attracted to Mr Salmond. “He was a much older man who didn’t look after himself,” she said.
She added: “I didn’t want anyone to think I had stayed over with him. That would be the ultimate humiliation.”
Asked what she had considered doing afterwards, she said: “I wanted it not to have happened. I just felt in absolute hell. I just wanted to bury it and not think about it every day.
“I did not want anyone to know this guy had touched me. He had other women and I did not want to be considered as that.”
I felt inside an internal kind of panic. I felt I had frozen
Earlier, the woman told the court about a separate alleged incident at Bute House in May 2014 when Mr Salmond was “half-cut” and asked her to drink shots from a bottle of “very good wine” from a Chinese diplomat.
She said she had two or three shots with Mr Salmond, who then sat on the floor and asked her to sit next to him. She said: “He was just groping me. ” She said she felt “frozen inside” and it felt like an “out of body experience”.
Asked by advocate depute Alex Prentice QC, for the Crown, if she had given consent, she replied: “I didn’t ask for any of it to happen. I wasn’t asked.”
She went on:“i just wish looking back that I had got up or decked him one, but it was like I was paralysed.
“I felt shaken, I felt embarrassed, I felt humiliated. But I also felt I could handle it. I thought it was a one-off.”
The trial, which is expected to last around four weeks, continues.