12 October 2015

Dear Mrs Claire,

We have never met.

This is a difficult letter to write, and will be difficult for you to read, I’m sure. But watching the news the other night and seeing the triumph on your husband’s face on the steps of the Old Bailey – after successfully defending that creepy TV presenter accused of rape – made me feel physically sick. And furious with myself for keeping silent all these years.

Because Michael Claire sexually assaulted me.

I was sixteen years old.

It happened on Thursday, 13 June 2002. I’d just finished my GCSEs and my mother had arranged for me to do a week’s work experience in your husband’s chambers.

Michael was working late that night. All the others had gone home. He asked me to stay behind to help him sort out a ton of papers he had to read for court the next morning. It was almost my last day, and I’d had such a good week. Everyone had been incredibly kind to me.

When I finished sorting the papers, he gave me a glass of red wine and had one himself. He didn’t have proper wine glasses, I remember, just Duralex tumblers. He was friendly and funny. There was a small button-back leather sofa in the corner of his room and he told me to have a seat. Then a few minutes later he came and sat beside me. I was uncomfortable and really shy; Michael was seen as a bit of a god in the chambers. I saw him as a bit of a god.

He put his hand on my thigh first. I was wearing a red cotton dress, no tights – it was very hot that week. I froze. I didn’t know what to do. Then he moved my dress up and began stroking my bare skin, squeezing my thigh. I pushed him off, but he just laughed and took my glass from me, putting it on the desk. He seemed to think I’d given him some sort of message that this was what I wanted, because he said, ‘You’re such a tease.’

He was trying to banter with me, not threatening me as such, but physically pinning me to the sofa with his arm so I couldn’t move. Then he started kissing me really hard, pushing his tongue into my mouth, squeezing my breasts, forcing me back against the end of the sofa so I was pinned under him.

I started to struggle, but he was so strong and determined. I didn’t scream, I didn’t dare … I couldn’t really believe what was happening. I know I was telling him to stop, but I don’t think he even heard me, he was so intent on his own pleasure – if it could be called ‘pleasure’, forcing someone like that, against their will.

Then the phone rang on his desk – maybe it was you? It caught him off guard. He pulled back just long enough for me to push him away and run.

I didn’t have a coat, because it was so hot. My dress was torn at the shoulder, so I borrowed the beige cardigan Wendy, the office manager, had left on the back of her chair. My mother and I lived in Sussex at the time, and I was staying the week with a school friend. She was out with her boyfriend, and her parents were at the theatre, so I was able to sneak in and never tell a living soul – not my friend, not her parents, not my mother – what had happened. In the morning, I rang Micky, the senior clerk, who’d taken me under his wing, and said I was ill and couldn’t come in.

I have spent so many hours thinking about that night in the thirteen years since it happened. I’ve wondered if I did lead Michael on, if I was giving him mixed messages. I blame myself, of course I do. I shouldn’t have stayed in the first place, shouldn’t have accepted the wine. Was my dress too short? Why didn’t I scream? Why didn’t I get up and leave as soon as he put his hand on my thigh? I still don’t know. I suppose I never believed he would do that to me.

That night still regularly haunts my dreams. Even now, I sometimes have flashbacks that make me tremble and sweat. I probably drink too much and suffer bouts of anxiety. But it didn’t kill me. I cope; no one would ever guess.

I’m not intending to go to the police or the media or anything. There was no way I could have told someone at the time and it’s too late now. I don’t have the courage, anyway. And I won’t sign this letter – it’s much too small a world. I saw red, though, the other night, watching Michael Claire, QC, crowing so smugly about getting a man off who everyone says is as guilty as sin. I just thought you should know who you’re married to, Mrs Claire – assuming you don’t already.