Ex-MP Charlie Elphicke free from jail after serving half of sentence for sex assault
A disgraced ex-MP has been released from prison after being jailed last year for three sexual assaults on two women.
Charlie Elphicke, 50, left Leyhill open prison on Tuesday after serving half of his sentence of two years, The Sun reports.
The dad-of-two, a former MP for Dover in Kent, had called himself a ‘naughty Tory’ while chasing one victim around his family home in London after groping her.
His second victim was a parliamentary worker in her early 20s, who he groped on two occasions within a month. He claimed in court he was ‘besotted’ with her.
The reports first came to light in 2017, when the Conservative MP was temporarily suspended from the party, but had the whip handed back in 2018.
He was charged with three counts of sexual assault in July 2019 – one from 2007, and another two from 2016 against a second woman.
Elphicke was jailed in September last year after a judge called him a ‘sexual predator who used [his] success and respectability as a cover’.
A jury at Southwark Crown Court was told how the qualified lawyer lied to police and senior colleagues about what happened.
His former wife, Natalie Elphicke – also his successor as Dover MP last year – announced the end of her 25-year marriage on Twitter almost as soon as the guilty verdicts were returned.
She claimed she only learned of his emotional attachment to the parliamentary worker when she poured over case files during the coronavirus lockdown.
Her husband had also hidden an affair with a third woman between 2015 and 2017 until his arrest in 2018.
Mrs Elphicke later said she found the court ordeal to be ‘horrible’ and ‘humiliating’.
Elphicke appealed his jail term earlier this year in March, but lost.
He challenged his jail term but lost an appeal for a suspended sentence in March.
Lady Justice Carr told the Court of Appeal he had been ‘prepared to repeatedly exploit his position of power and trust in order to pursue his sexual desires’.
She added: ‘He preyed on those in a weaker position than himself, using his success and respectability as a cover.
‘He used his power in order to create conditions in which he believed he could act on his sexual desires without fear of consequence.’
Both complainants, who did not know one another, each described how Elphicke referred to himself as ‘naughty’ after assaulting them in evidence given during trial.
Elphicke said he kissed the first victim because he initially felt it was something they both wanted, and denied assaulting either of them.
The first victim told jurors: ‘I was just shocked – really, really shocked. He was saying really bizarre things that are embarrassing, like, “I’m a naughty Tory.” He was trying to grope me and trying to grab my bum.’
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