{"id":203666,"date":"2020-03-10T08:36:52","date_gmt":"2020-03-10T08:36:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=203666"},"modified":"2020-03-12T07:32:25","modified_gmt":"2020-03-12T07:32:25","slug":"alex-salmond-in-court-on-14-sexual-offences-charges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=203666","title":{"rendered":"Alex Salmond in court on 14 sexual offences charges"},"content":{"rendered":"

Introduction \u2013 March 9, 2020<\/h1>\n
\"\"<\/a>

Rupert Murdoch (left) and Alex Salmond while campaigning for Scotland’s independence. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n

The Scottish National Party’s regional pre-eminence may be drawing to a close. It\u2019s early days yet but Alex Salmon’s trial could prove the beginning of the end for the party that has dominated politics in Scotland for nearly two decades.<\/h5>\n
To be sure some will argue that Alex Salmond, who is on trial for a spate of sexual offences, no longer leads the party. But he led its revival after years in the political wilderness and even though it is now trying to distance itself from him, Salmond still commands much support among rank and file members.<\/h5>\n
For now, at least.<\/h5>\n
On the first day of the trial in Edinburgh, Salmond testified that he believed that one of the women who accused him of sexual assault had actually consented. Whether that defence will work with the other nine women who have accused Salmond remains to be seen.<\/h5>\n
Whatever the eventual outcome, this trial is not going to benefit the Scottish National Party. The party is already facing problems after the man tipped to replace Nicola Sturgeon as first minister was forced to resign, having been accused of grooming a sixteen-year-old schoolboy<\/span><\/a>.<\/h5>\n
Salmond\u2019s trial will only only compound those problems and expose the party for what it really is. Not Scotland’s liberators, as they claim, but a collection of power-hungry opportunists who are willing to promise and do anything in their quest for power.<\/h5>\n
As Salmond’s trial progresses this realisation will only grow among ordinary Scots and, we suspect, among many Scottish Nationalist diehards too. Ed.<\/h5>\n

‘I felt like I was being hunted by Alex Salmond,’ former official tells jury<\/h1>\n

Severin Carrell — The Guardian March 9, 2020<\/h2>\n

A former Scottish government official has told a court that Alex Salmond made her feel like she \u201cwas being hunted\u201d as she gave evidence about a charge of attempted rape.<\/span><\/p>\n

The woman, referred to as H, alleges that Salmond stripped her naked before forcing her on to a bed at Bute House, the then first minister\u2019s official residence in Edinburgh, and then pressed his naked body on top of her, pressing her down with his arm.<\/span><\/p>\n

She accused Salmond, who denies the charge of attempted rape, of initially forcing himself on her in a drawing room at the Georgian townhouse on 13 June 2014. She alleges he repeatedly kissed her neck and face, putting his hand under her skirt and shirt, before she managed to flee upstairs to fetch her belongings.<\/span><\/p>\n

She alleges that he was drunk, and laughed off her protests and demands for him to stop. Upstairs in the bedroom, she alleges that after promising he wanted to talk to her to put things right, he began to attack her again and became visibly aroused, before climbing on top of her.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI felt like I was being hunted,\u201d H told the jury at the high court in Edinburgh, visibly distressed. \u201cHe talked to me for a second and then he just full on pounced. It was dark at this point \u2013 he was just like physically all over me, kissing me, just taking my clothes off. It all happened really fast.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

She told Alex Prentice QC, for the prosecution, that she had never consented to any of this attention. \u201cI felt like I was in some sort of trance. I was telling him to stop the whole time,\u201d she said.<\/span><\/p>\n

The woman gave evidence from behind a screen on the first day of the former Scottish National party leader\u2019s trial on 14 charges including attempted rape and a sexual assault against H. The 65-year-old denies those allegations and 12 other charges of numerous sexual assaults, indecent assaults and intent to rape against nine other women.<\/span><\/p>\n

Salmond sat in the dock flanked by two court security officers and watched H\u2019s testimony on a closed-circuit television screen fixed on the courtroom wall.<\/span><\/p>\n

She told the jury that despite having an arm injury from an earlier accident, she succeeded in pushing Salmond off her and he fell asleep. She said she then retreated to a nearby bathroom, locked the door and curled up under a bed cover in the foetal position, lying there for several hours, and it was close to dawn when she left Bute House by the back door.<\/span><\/p>\n

She felt humiliated and disgusted, she said. \u201cI knew he had other women and I didn\u2019t want to be considered as that. I was really scared.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

H told the jury that Salmond had attacked her at Bute House several weeks prior to that incident, after a regular dinner, when the then first minister had been drinking heavily.<\/span><\/p>\n

She said Salmond regularly had late-night political discussions and dinners in the run-up to the September 2014 independence referendum, to plan strategy or entertain supporters and businesspeople.<\/span><\/p>\n

H agreed she could not remember exactly which night the first assault took place, because it had been an extremely stressful time when she was working long hours. She said while they were in the sitting room at Bute House, Salmond presented a bottle of a spirit given to him by a Chinese diplomat and asked her to drink shots with him. <\/span><\/p>\n

She alleges that after asking her to sit on the floor beside her, he began kissing and groping her, pushing his hands under her clothing despite her repeated requests to stop. \u201cI just felt like I had an out-of-body experience. I just remember it was like I froze inside,\u201d she said. \u201cI was embarrassed, and I felt humiliated. [I] didn\u2019t want people to know because I didn\u2019t want to be known as another one of his women.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Salmond, who has pleaded not guilty to every charge, has lodged a defence that says in four of the charges, which involve allegations of sexual assault by two women and intent to rape by a third, he believed the women had given their consent to being kissed and having their hair stroked.<\/span><\/p>\n

The jury was told that Salmond \u201creasonably believed [them] to be consenting throughout\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

He has also lodged a defence of alibi to H\u2019s allegations about the first assault in May 2014. She was unable to specify the day when the alleged offence took place. Salmond\u2019s legal team has submitted a long list of his diary dates that month, arguing that for most of the month he was not at Bute House during the evening, and was often at his home in Strichen, Aberdeenshire.<\/span><\/p>\n

The woman\u2019s evidence continues on Tuesday. The trial is expected to last at least three weeks.<\/span><\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Whatever the eventual outcome, this trial could prove the beginning of the end for the Scottish National Party’s dominance<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":201299,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-203666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-Current_Affairs"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=203666"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203666\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":203724,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203666\/revisions\/203724"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/201299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=203666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=203666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=203666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}