Crispin Odey accuser claimed a second investor groped her in train ‘joke’

Britain's Crispin Odey arrives at Hendon Magistrates' Court in London
Crispin Odey arrives at Hendon Magistrates’ Court on Thursday
REUTERS
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Hedge fund boss Crispin Odey’s accuser claimed to police that a second investor had groped her as they travelled back from a corporate day out to the Rugby World Cup, a court heard.

Odey, 62, is on trial accused of lunging at the woman and “thrusting” his hand up her skirt, after they went to his Chelsea home for a private meeting in summer 1998.

When the woman – who was a junior City banker – came forward to police to report Odey, she accused a second man, Julian Barrell, of sexually assaulting her in November 1999.

She said Mr Barrell played a “joke” on her on the train ride back from a Rugby World Cup match in Cardiff, having persuaded her to put her hands on her head as her banking colleagues watched on.

“The joke is, at the end of the day, they say we can make your breasts move without touching them, and then say ‘oh, actually no, we can’t’”, she said.

“The joke is to grab the breasts, that’s the joke. They all laughed because they set up the joke in advance.”

The woman added: “They are all drunk, he’s not going to lightly touch my breasts.”

The woman, then in her 20s, claimed one of her colleagues “threw money at me” after Mr Barrell’s alleged actions, but she was left “so mad…and embarrassed”.

The woman claimed Mr Barrell apologised and sent her flowers following the incident, but she threw them in the bin.

“I just felt, you know what, you don’t get to do that to me. You don’t get to think that’s funny, it’s not funny”, she told the police.

Fighting back tears, the woman said she had never had problems with her own male clients and was angered by the incidents with Odey and Mr Barrell.

“Clients take a sense of entitlement”, she said. “We are the brokers and they are the powerful clients, and that steps out of the boundaries.

“It shouldn’t be allowed, there has to be recognition that people don’t get to do what they want, just because you work for them.”

Saying why she reported the incidents to human resources, she added: “All I was trying to do was claim some human dignity, not up end the world or go to police, just reclaim a boundary and that’s not right.”

Odey, the multi-millionaire founder of Odey Asset Management, denies indecently assaulting the woman at his Chelsea home, saying he tried to get her into bed but stopped when she was “appalled” by his verbal advances.

He claims she asked "where is this going to end?" after they went to his home in Swan Walk, Chelsea, and despite being married he replied: "This is going to end up in bed, hopefully”.

Odey told police he had “misread the signals”, insisting there was no physical contact with the woman and denying groping her breasts or putting his hand up her skirt.

In his police interview, Odey said allegations of touching the woman were “rubbish”, telling the detective: “It’s not how I behave and it’s not how I did behave.”

The woman wrote to Odey in 2013 about the alleged incident, accusing him of sexual assault and saying he was older than her father with “thinning old hair, kind of a red face, and paunchy”.

Odey said he was “bemused” by the email, which he said misrepresented his actions, telling her: “I hate how you seem to hate me”.

The woman said she went to the police to report both Odey and Mr Barrell in 2017 after seeing reports about the #MeToo movement and disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein.

The trial has been adjourned to March 11.

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