A Metropolitan Police officer accused of raping a woman in the sea during his stag do has told a jury that he went into the water with her because of “peer pressure”.
Sergeant Laurence Knight, 34, allegedly attacked a stranger off Brighton beach in the early hours of Saturday 17 July 2021.
A jury at Southwark Crown Court was told that she said him: “You’re getting married in two weeks.”
Prosecutors said that once they were in the water, he moved her underwear before raping her.
The woman asked him: “What are you doing?” And she said: “Stop!” But he did not reply, she said in her police interview.
Earlier in the trial, the prosecution read from her police interview: “I said, you’re getting married in two weeks. Just stop. Don’t do that. And he just didn’t stop.”
In his evidence to the jury today (Friday 23 June), Knight said that she first touched his penis.
He said that he then touched her vagina for a few seconds, thinking it was consensual, before she made the comment about his imminent wedding and they returned to the shore.
Knight denied having any intention to penetrate her vagina.
Jurors were told that he had drunk heavily and his group had been visited by strippers before they met the alleged victim and a male friend.
The prosecution said that Knight knew that the man was either the woman’s boyfriend or on a date with her. Knight and his party wanted to find somewhere to carry on drinking.
Maryam Syed, prosecuting, asked Knight: “If this was another guy’s girl, why did you go into the sea with her?”
He replied: “Quite honestly, I quite enjoyed having the attention. It was a very spur of the moment request from her. It was not discussed before.
“Having had some alcohol and being the stag and being the one that everything was deflected towards, I suppose the phrase is peer pressure.”
The prosecutor asked: “From who? Was (your friend) going: ‘Go on, get in the sea with her! Get in!’”
He replied: “I may have applied it myself.”
The prosecutor said: “You are a police officer. You understand the issues of dealing with people who might be in drink and vulnerable, particularly young women.”
He replied: “Everybody.”
She responded: “Particularly young women.”
He replied: “Yes.”
The prosecutor told him: “The notion that she wanted you in the sea, you could have said: ‘That is very kind. I don’t think I will.’”
He said: “I didn’t suggest … at any point that going into the sea would have been a good idea.”
The prosecutor asked: “How was your judgment?”
He replied: “Clearly not very good.”
The prosecutor said that he went into the sea with her so he could “get her alone” but he said other people were watching them on the shore.
The court was told that he sent her a Facebook message on Wednesday 21 July that year saying: “You are not (the woman) that went for a dip in the sea on Friday while her guy friend looked after her bag?”
The defendant, who worked for a charity and as a teacher before joining the police, told jurors he had sent the message “to acknowledge I was embarrassed, she was younger, perhaps less mature and she was the one that stepped in and stopped it going any further”.
Knight, from Leyton in east London, said that he later deleted the message because he became worried his fiancée would see it.
He also told jurors that his “initial reaction” to his arrest was to believe that he was being subjected to “an extended prank from the stag do”.
The Met Police said that it had suspended Knight from duty.
He denies rape and sexual assault.
The trial continues.
