Insurance boss cleared over hotel grope claim

An insurance company boss has been cleared of groping a woman as they posed for a photograph during an event at a luxury hotel.

Daniel Wilkinson, 53, a director of brokers CGI Insurance, was accused of sexually assaulting the woman at the five-star Hilton Bankside hotel on London’s South Bank on 23 November 2017.

He said he only put his hands on her waist and a jury at Inner London Crown Court cleared him after deliberating for less than an hour.

Earlier Judge Ian Stern, QC, told jurors in his summing up the woman made her complaint almost immediately after the incident.

‘It was suggested she was angry with the defendant for putting his hands on her back. You’ll have to consider if that makes sense or is likely.

‘You can see that the defendant had his arm around the complainant and she said, “I didn’t mind that.”’

After the event the woman posted a photo on Facebook from the night and changed her screen saver to one of the photos of the group on stage.

Sarah Elliot QC, defending, had questioned why she would choose to remember in this way a night where she had been allegedly assaulted.

The woman claimed Wilkinson grabbed her bum and vagina while their group was posing for a photograph on stage at an event.

‘After the photos had finished I ran off stage and collected my bag,’ the woman said.

‘He just grabbed me, he grabbed my f-nny. I said to the lads, I kept repeating, did you see? Did you see?’

Wilkinson was said to have taken a picture of the woman and was ‘sniggering’ at it.

He then said she had transformed from a ‘scruffy goat’.

Asked about this in a police interview, Wilkinson said: ‘I can’t recall, it’s probably the sort of thing I might say but I can’t recall saying it to her.’

Wilkinson, of Lichfield, Staffordshire, denied and was cleared of sexual assault.

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