Royal Navy engineer cleared of groping colleague at party on board destroyer
Danny Holmes says he was wrongly accused after confronting the woman about a stolen bottle of wine.
A Royal Navy sailor has been cleared of sexually assaulting a colleague at a party on board the HMS Defender.
Leading Engineering Technician Danny Holmes, 31, was accused of touching his workmate’s backside on two separate occasions during the celebratory evening.
A court martial heard how he ‘couldn’t keep his hands to himself’ during the event on the Type 45 destroyer, which had been deployed to the Gulf.
But Holmes insists he didn’t touch his colleague at all – and instead claimed she had made up the allegations after being found to have stolen his bottle of wine.
He said the young woman became ‘annoyed’ after admitting taking his drink, having initially denied it.
Later that evening he attempted to resolve the situation with the ‘very drunk’ woman, but was instead accused of groping her backside.
Other witnesses said it seemed as though she were ‘taking her anger out’ on Holmes, who has served in the Navy for 13 years.
Holmes, who was serving as a weapons engineer on the Portsmouth-based ship, was acquitted of two counts of sexual assault by touching.
He argued that the woman became so embarrassed after being caught with his drink that she fabricated the allegations.
He told the court how he only knew the alleged victim as ‘another member of the ship’s company’ and had no friendship or relationship with her.
The engineer said he bought a bottle of wine from the bar and put it in the middle mess on the way to the toilet and found it wasn’t there when he returned.
He says he saw the woman drinking it, and said she denied it was his, insisting she had bought it herself.
‘When I pointed out she couldn’t have just bought it because half had already been drunk, she sort of admitted it. She was annoyed,’ Holmes added.
He told the court he later tried to resolve the issue with his colleague, but got no answer to his shouts of her name.
The engineer said he later saw her get ‘upset’ but ‘didn’t know’ what about, and was told by a colleague of the allegations made against him when he returned to his cabin.
Holmes said a cabin mate told him the woman was saying he touched her. He added: ‘I was surprised and wasn’t sure what to make of all of it.
‘There was no point in the evening when I touched her bottom. It didn’t happen.’
Another crew member told the court he had witnessed the argument over the bottle of wine.
Leading Engineering Technician James Bale says he saw the woman ‘getting very defensive’ when Holmes asked her about the wine.
He says the discussion between them ‘grew into a heated argument’.
The eyewitness added: ‘She initially denied taking the bottle, but after five or 10 minutes she admitted she did take the wine.
‘She got really upset and it seemed she was taking her anger out on Holmes. It was like she had been humiliated.’
A board of military personnel deliberated for nearly two hours before finding Holmes not guilty of both charges.
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