Charlie Elphicke: Former Dover Conservative MP appears in court charged with three sexual assaults
Charlie Elphicke is charged with assaulting one woman in 2007 and another twice in 2016.
Monday 6 July 2020 14:46, UK
A former Conservative MP chased a woman around his kitchen and chanted "I'm a naughty Tory" after sexually assaulting her while his wife was away, a court heard.
Charlie Elphicke - who represented Dover in Kent between 2010 and 2019, when he stepped down - is charged with three counts of sexual assault.
The first relates to an incident in 2007, when he is alleged to have invited a woman, who was in her early 30s at the time, to his house for a drink.
Southwark Crown Court heard the woman was "flattered" when the then-36-year-old approached her.
Jurors were told Elphicke, now 49, opened a £40 bottle of wine and began asking her about her sexual preferences, including whether she liked "bondage and whips".
He is said to have leaned over to her with the guise of filling up her wine glass, before reaching into her top to grope her right breast and trying to kiss her.
Prosecuting, Eloise Marshall QC said: "She immediately shouted: 'No!'
"She was shocked. The whole incident was completely unexpected.
"He was chanting in a sing-song way: 'I'm a naughty Tory, I'm a naughty Tory', as though it was the school playground."
The jury was told he then chased her around the house trying to smack her bottom, and that the alleged victim "felt horrified by the entire situation".
She is said to have described it to a friend on the phone afterwards as "like a sketch from The Benny Hill Show".
The other two charges relate to a parliamentary worker in her early 20s, who Elphicke is alleged to have sexually assaulted on two occasions in 2016.
She claims to have been in her "dream job" when she was cornered by Elphicke in Westminster.
Describing one of the alleged incidents, she said: "He fully came at me, pulled his body towards me.
"He had his mouth open, continually trying to kiss me."
The prosecutor added that the woman "clearly rejected" Elphicke, reminding him that he was married and that there was a large age gap.
But he was said to have replied: "What's the matter? Don't you like me? Everything's fine."
"I knew you'd bring my age into it," he is said to have added.
The court heard she reported the incident to Anne Milton MP, the Conservative deputy chief whip, in 2016, before contacting police the following year.
The court heard Elphicke was called in to speak to Ms Milton, but "completely denied" anything the woman had alleged against him.
Elphicke denies all three charges and was supported in court by his wife Natalie Elphicke, who replaced him as MP for Dover in the December 2019 election.
The trial continues.