MP ‘gave teenager gin before sex assault.’

Tory MP Imran Ahmad Khan whispered ‘disgusting, slimy things’ to a teenager before sexually assaulting him in his bunkbed, a could heard.

The Muslim MP for Wakefield, who is gay, is said to have groped the 15-year-old in the top-bunk after a family party in Staffordshire in January 2008.

The alleged victim told Southwark Crown Court that before assaulting him, Khan, 48, had asked him to show him the way to the downstairs toilet.

But Gudrun Young, defending, told him he did not say he had been dragged up the stairs until an officer reminded him it was part of his original account to the police.

‘You are taking the suggestion you are being dragged upstairs and an improvisation comes out in front of the jury,’ said Mr Young.

He replied: ‘You are trying to make out the fact I trained as an actor and I am acting this out.

‘The reason I am saying this is because it happened.

‘I am not acting, I am telling the truth.’

Jurors heard that Khan threw away the boy’s cat he had been holding before he dragged him downstairs as the teenager tried to grab a banister.

Officers showed him a notebook of his original account to police after the alleged incident which brought back a further flood of memories he had ‘blocked off’, the court heard.

‘It made me realised I had blocked lots of stuff leading up to the event,’ he said.

‘Something like when my mum told me he was running to be an MP, it came flooding back again.’

But Ms Young told him there were significant differences and additional details in his later police interviews and the account he had originally given.

‘I suggest to you that all of those explanations are more excuses to try to explain to the police, and perhaps even to yourself, why there is no mention at all of a central part of the account,’ said Ms Young.

He replied: ‘I do not agree.

‘I was in shock, I was a child, I just had something horrific happen to me in my home.

‘I didn’t want to go into detail about it, I just wanted it to disappear and get on with my life.’

Police came to the house and the teenager gave an account but he did not want to take the matter any further until 2019 when he saw Khan elected for public office.

Jurors heard that when he was invited for a second police interview in February last year he believed it was about the MP’s mental health.

He told jurors that a an officer gave him a phone call saying he needed to come in for an interview because prosecutors were concerned.

‘They were concerned about Mr Khan’s mental health,’ he said.

The court heard that the complainant had not disclosed the detail of Khan suggesting they watch some porn in his 2019 interview because he had ‘blocked it out’.

He rejected the barrister’s suggestion he was ‘inventing and embellishing’ things, adding: ‘Why would I do that?

‘I get nothing out of this. All I get is pain.’

Jurors were told that prior to following the boy to his room Khan had been ‘whispering disgusting, slimy things’ into his ear.

‘It all came as a surprise to you until he was touching your sleeping bag,’ said Ms Young.

‘If that was true, how does it in any way fit with what you are saying?’

He replied: ‘Because it all goes into one for me.

‘All of it was disgusting, all of it was horrible.’

The complainant denied that him telling police officers Khan had ‘almost’ touched his genitals meant that the attack did not happen.

‘He almost touched my testicles.

‘He touched my body but he almost touched my testicles, within a hair’s breath, because I stopped it,’ he said.

In Achieving Best Evidence (ABE) video describing the complainant described the events leading up to the alleged assault to police officers.

The teenager, his little brother, and Khan were allegedly sitting on the floor of the bedroom after the party, as the older man drank gin and tonic.

‘I think it must have been quite late because everyone else was asleep,’ the complainant earlier said.

‘We were sat in a circle.

‘He [Khan] had a cut glass tumbler.

‘He was saying would you like to have a drink?

‘I had it and didn’t like it.

‘As it was in my mouth, he kept pushing it back and I could feel it in the edges of my mouth.

‘The glass going in my mouth and it being forced and I kept saying,”I don’t like it, I don’t like it.”’

The complainant said that he and his brother felt ‘weird’ about the situation.

‘He kept forcing us to drink that,’ the then 15-year-old added.

It was decided, unspoken between the brothers, to go to bed, jurors heard.

‘We very quickly sort of turned out the lights and went to our bed.

‘He was drunk because I could hear his heavy breathing.

‘We thought if we go to bed it will just stop….the game is over.’

Asked further on in the same interview to expand on the drinking, the complainant said: ‘He asked me to sniff it first.

‘I said I didn’t like the smell.

‘He said you should taste it.

‘I tasted it and I said no and he forced it back and I felt the glass in the back of my mouth and I couldn’t push it back.

‘My back was kind of against the bookcase so as I went back I didn’t have anywhere to go.’

The 15-year-old tried to ‘shimmy’ into the corner to ‘escape,’ the court heard.

‘I don’t really like fizzy things anyway,’ he continued.

‘It was also the bubbles as well.

‘It was kind of going up my nose as well a little bit when I was trying to not drink it.

‘After that moment [my brother] and I realised this is weird.’

He told police how no one was ever drunk in their house and due to his and his brothers’ ‘limited knowledge’ they both thought Khan was ‘just drunk’.

The officer asked whether the MP offered the younger boy gin and tonic.

‘I think so,’ the complainant said.

‘He had seen what had happened to me.

‘Imran was like about to offer it to [my brother] and that was the point where we were like we’re going to go to bed.’

It was once the two siblings had gone to bed that Khan initiated his sexual assault, the jury heard.

The ‘blue wall’ MP was born in Wakefield, where he attended the independent Silcoates School.

He went to university at the Pushkin Institute in Russia and graduated from King’s College in London with a bachelor’s degree in war studies.

The MP worked for the UN as a special assistant for political affairs in Mogadishu before entering Parliament.

Dressed in a suit and sat out of the dock at the back of the court, Khan was expressionless as he listened to the evidence.

The complainant’s mother told the court she had been ‘blaming herself every day’ since her son told her what had happened.

The court heard Khan was one of the extra guests the mother had to put up after the party after she was told he was ‘the equivalent of foreign royalty’.

‘He was a very charming man.

‘It was in my head he has got to have a bed,’ she said.

Jurors heard that her son later walked into her room ‘shaking’ and ‘speaking in hushed tones’.

‘He came around to me and I just grabbed him and tried to stop him from shaking.

‘His body was shaking,’ she said.

‘He was just speaking in hushed tones saying “He was trying to feel me.”

The mother told jurors that before the incident her son was a “joyous boy” and a ‘very young 15’.

‘All of them were, we kept them young by living where we did.

‘It was an Enid Blyton existence,’ she said.

‘He was a child when he went up the stairs that night and suddenly he had to face what he had to face.’

After her son urged her to get his younger brother, she removed the young boy from the bedroom where Khan appeared to be sleeping.

She then proceeded to grab her youngest daughter from her room and got all of her children into her bedroom.

‘I had no idea what this man might do.

‘I didn’t know whether he was violent, I didn’t know whether he would be after a little girl.

‘What went through my mind is I had to get all the underage children in my bedroom and that is what I did,’ she said.

The mother said she didn’t sleep as she cuddled her 15-year-old until she waited for a reasonable time to get Khan and his friend out of the house.

Her voice raised, she said: ‘Quite honestly, ever since this happened I blame myself.

‘What mother in her right mind would put a stranger in the boys’ bedroom.

‘It never occurred to me.

‘He was a guest to me, I gave him food and provided him with a bed and he abused that by doing that to [my son].

‘How dare he?’

Giving evidence, the complainant’s father sobbed as he described his ‘inconsolable’ son telling him he had just been molested.

The father, who has suffered a brain haemorrhage and stroke, struggled to get the words out as he described Khan turning up to the party alongside another unexpected guest.

Sean Larkin, QC, prosecuting, told him: ‘Whilst there, Mr Khan made some mention about being well connected with his family but being Muslim but drinking alcohol?’

‘Yes,’ replied the father.

Jurors heard the father went to bed early and was woken by his son walking into his room extremely distressed before he told him he had been molested.

‘Crying. He was inconsolable, he was shaking,’ he said.

The frail pensioner raised his voice after it was suggested to him by Khan’s barrister he didn’t recall the exact words his son used.

‘I was there. I was there. You weren’t,’ he said, his voice trembling with emotion.

The complainant’s brother-law told the court he was the reason Khan turned out at the party along with another man, as the two were friendly and ‘mixed in the same circles.

He told the court he ‘didn’t have much memory’ of the party, but he remembered waking up the next morning with Khan and his friend gone.

‘I do not recall the exact details but I know there was some reason why [his friend and Khan] were asked to leave before I actually got up,’ he said.

The witness told the court he stopped seeing Khan socially after the incident, except for randomly bumping into him some years later.

Jurors heard that that Khan attempted to make a ‘passing comment’ about that event but was dismissed by the other man.

The next time he had heard of Khan was a voice message the politician left for him two days after the 2019 general election.

In the message, Khan said: ‘Good morning, it is Imran Khan speaking.

‘I was just chatting to [friend].

‘He gave me a call and I am rather concerned about things.

‘Wanted to know what you thought the situation was, what I should be doing.

‘Chat to you soon, take care.’

Asked what he thought Khan was referring to, the witness said: ‘I understand him to be referring to the fact that [the complainant] had found out or been informed of Mr Khan’s elevation to become an MP and had a bad reaction to that, and wanted to report the situation.’

The trial continues.