A senior civil servant in Lord Falconer’s Department of Constitutional Affairs raped and indecently assaulted a woman in a government office, it was alleged yesterday.
The man is accused of raping a 39 year-old woman and then forcing her to perform oral sex after a social function on the evening of September 29 th 2003.
The prosecuting counsel Miss Jima told a jury at the Old Bailey that the woman had been victim of sexual assault by a 36 year-old man she had deemed as “insignificant and insubstantial” and who, on the evening of the function, had “made a nuisance of himself”.
The court heard graphic details of the alleged incident and how the woman sustained significant abrasions and bruising following the act.
The defendant, employed in the Department of Constitutional Affairs headed up by the Lord Chancellor Charlie Falconer, denies all the allegations but does not deny intercourse took place. He claims it was the woman that initiated the encounter and that sex was entirely consensual.
Given these conflicting accounts Miss Jima told the jury that the case would focus heavily on the issue of consent.
Neither party can be named for legal reasons. The case continues and the trial is expected to last 10 days.
Greg Norman – 29/11/2004
Greg Norman/1 Enoch Powell/1
A leading local Tory rubbished Labour’s race relations act last night and called for immediate re-emigration of immigrants signalling a tough stance against minority communities in the West Midlands.
Shadow secretary of state for administration Enoch Powell launched a savage attack on the government’s proposals to improve racial integration during a speech at a local constituency meeting in Wolverhampton.
Powell said, “to enact such legislation now is to throw a match to gunpowder” and describing Britain today said he was, “filled with foreboding” and reminded “of the river Tiber foaming with much blood”. On Labour’s plans for integration the MP said “the idea that to be integrated into a population means to be indistinguishable … is a ludicrous misconception and a dangerous one”.
Outlining his own party’s policies Powell demanded immediate “encouragement of re-emigration” and denied that immigrant communities were all striving to adapt fully to British life saying some had “vested interest in the preservation and sharpening of racial interests.”
During his speech he repeatedly cited the worries of local residents regarding the country’s burgeoning ethnic population, which he predicted would reach between 5 and 7 million by the end of the century. He said Wolverhampton locals often wrote and sought his advice with one man feeling “the country will not be worth living in for his children”. A woman who opened a guest-house told Powell how immigrants had created an atmosphere of noise and confusion and that when she refused them rooms they complained of racial discrimination.
The Race relations act is a key component of the Labour government’s election manifesto and it is not clear how Powell’s incendiary remarks will affect community relations in the West Midlands.
Greg Norman 10/01/2005
