A York community campaigner accused of rape insists he had consensual sex with the alleged victim after they drank three bottles of wine together.
Gordon Campbell-Thomas, 72, appeared at York Crown Court today (Wednesday, August 24) for the second day of his trial.
Detective Constable Hannah McPeake, the lead investigating officer, read out a transcript of her interview with the accused community volunteer following his arrest on suspicion of two counts of rape.
During the interview in December 2020, Mr Campbell-Thomas told officers he and the alleged victim, who is in her 20s, had watched the Jack Nicholson movie As Good as It Gets while drinking red wine at his flat in York.
He claimed they watched the film to the end and that the woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, then held his hand. Mr Campbell-Smith, a founder member of the St Nicks Nature Reserve in York who once stood as an independent candidate in the city-council elections.
“We had three bottles of wine at that time,” Mr Campbell-Thomas told officers.
He said the woman then “posed for a photograph” and exposed an intimate part of her body which he kissed.
The woman, who is from York but can’t be named for legal reasons, claims he then raped her twice, but Mr Campbell-Thomas says they started kissing and then had sex “and that was it”.
“I said you can stay the night if you want (but) she said ‘No, I’ve got to go,” he told officers.
“She said she’d get a taxi down the road.”
‘Don’t tell anyone’
According to Mr Campbell-Thomas, the alleged victim then got lost.
“I asked where she was and she didn’t know,” he added. “I said stay where you are and I’ll get you a taxi.”
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Mr Campbell-Thomas said he was concerned for the woman and called police, but she eventually phoned him and said she had arrived back home.
He said that when he asked her if she was OK, she said “yes”.
However, he claimed that the following day the woman called him and told him that she couldn’t “remember anything” about the night before.
“I said we had sex,” added Mr Campbell-Thomas.
He said that when the woman asked him if he had used protection, he said “no”.
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He told officers that he didn’t need protection because he was 70 years’ old at the time.
He said he “liked red wine” and that they had drunk three bottles, but that he hadn’t “pushed myself on her”.
“She was making the moves,” Mr Campbell-Smith told officers.
“It was mutual consent as far as I’m aware.”
He said both he and the alleged victim were both “a little bit drunk”.
When DC McPeake asked him what had caused the sex to stop, Mr Campbell-Thomas replied: “I’m not sure. I think she said, ‘I’ve got to go.’”
When asked if the woman seemed okay when she left his flat, he said: “Yes, she seemed absolutely fine. She said, ‘Don’t tell anyone’. I said I won’t say anything.”
York ‘was getting dangerous’
Mr Campbell-Thomas, of Ascot Way, denies two counts of rape, claiming the sex was consensual and that the woman had initiated it.
Prosecutor Brian Russell said the alleged incidents occurred either late at night on November 14, 2020, or in the early hours of the following morning.
The alleged victim said that after leaving the flat she made several phone calls and sent messages to various people before getting into an Uber cab.
It was said that she apparently found the taxi driver attractive and “persistently asked him for his telephone number”.
He refused to give her his number and once he had dropped her off at home, he was “so concerned about her behaviour” he informed his controller at Uber, saying he felt “uncomfortable”.
The woman was met by her flatmate who was also concerned about her friend’s “irrational and uncharacteristic” behaviour.
The alleged victim told her flatmate she thought she had had sex but had “no recollection of doing so” and was “somewhat confused” about what had happened.
Mr Russell said although there was no evidence to suggest that Mr Campbell-Thomas had spiked her drink, the woman believed this was the case and that it explained her lack of memory and her “strange” behaviour.
A few days later, she made a complaint to police about Mr Campbell-Thomas who was arrested and brought in for questioning.
He claimed the woman was “happy to have sex with him” and although they were both “rather drunk” they were “not so drunk as to make consent impossible”.
The named taxi driver who took the woman home said he could “smell (that) she (had been) drinking”.
“It looked like she was upset and crying,” he added.
“We were talking. I tried to calm her down. She said there were bad people in the world and that York was getting dangerous.
“She seemed to be uncomfortable. She said I was attractive and asked for my phone number.”
He said he felt “uncomfortable” by the time he dropped her off at her flat in York.
“I contacted Uber to report her behaviour,” he added. Mr Russell said the alleged victim “did not consent” to sex with Mr Campbell-Thomas and told the jury they would have to decide the case on whether or not the former council candidate “reasonably believed” the woman was consenting.
The jury is now considering its verdict.