Sarah Wollaston’s role in the Nigel Evans saga can now be fully explained. The Guardian have done a pretty good round up:
“At first, the alleged rape victim told no one what happened. He used his iPad on the train home from Evans’s cottage to search for rape and sexual assault support, but quickly distracted himself with his 12,000-word dissertation. He was not to know that around the same time his friend – the other key complainant – made what he described as an “off-the-cuff remark” to Wollaston about his own encounter with Evans.
The impromptu conversation, over glasses of wine in a Westminster bar, was crucial and triggered a chain of events involving the police.
A month later, in April 2013, the alleged sexual assault victim confided in more detail to Wollaston in a one-on-one meeting, and she decided to set up an urgent meeting with the Commons Speaker, John Bercow. Shortly before the meeting with Bercow, Wollaston’s phone rang. It was the alleged rape victim who, for the first time, gave her his account of what happened when he had slept at Evans’s cottage in Pendleton a month earlier.
Wollaston, a GP with 20 years’ experience including a spell working as a police forensic examiner where she dealt with victims of sexual and domestic violence, told Bercow about both complaints against Evans at a meeting in the Speaker’s office, where Bercow’s secretary and the alleged sexual assault victim were also present.
Bercow said it was for the young man to decide whether he should take the matter to police. A meeting with the alleged rape victim was scheduled for the following week but, following legal advice from the Speaker’s counsel Michael Carpenter, Bercow’s secretary informed Wollaston that the Speaker “cannot handle this”.
Wollaston, frustrated by the response from Bercow’s office, took the matter into her own hands and passed a police telephone number to both men, telling them they had a duty to come forward and ensure Evans was apprehended before any other young men were assaulted.”
And the rest is history…
