NOT GUILTY: Power Boating Businessman Cleared Of Royal Thames Yacht Club Grope

A power boat record breaking businessman was cleared yesterday of groping a woman outside the Royal Thames Yacht Club after telling a jury he was arguing with her smoking companion.

Entrepreneur Peter Bonham Christie, 39, always maintained his innocence, insisting the motivation for the pair’s claims was to get him drummed out of the 245 year-old private members club.

The Isleworth Crown Court jury took less than three hours to unanimously find Bonham Christie not guilty of one count of sexual assault.

Privately-educated Bonham Christie, whose company transports expensive classic cars, was accused of “lunging” towards the 27 year-old fellow club-member in the early hours of November 30, 2018 and thrusting his hand between her thighs.

She told the trial she was left shaken and upset by the incident and her evidence was backed-up by another club-member, Andrew Sutherland, 60, who was enjoying a cigarette with her.

He told the four-day trial: “I thought he was going to shake her hand, but grabbed her literally in the crotch area…between her thighs…I was quite shocked.”

However, Bonham Christie, who attended £40,000 a-year Millfield School, insisted he never touched the woman, but had gone outside to confront Mr Sutherland about a cocaine allegation he made about him.

“It’s a nonsense, a complete nonsense. The whole thing is ridiculous,” he said. “I know that I didn’t do it. She’s convinced somethings happened, I didn’t do it, that’s it.

“All they wanted was for me to be thrown out of the Royal Thames Yacht Club. They got trapped in their lie. What they have done is wrong.”

The defendant had spent the evening at auctioneers Bonhams, where he had a contract to transport expensive cars for sale, before moving onto five-star Claridge’s and in total consumed two glasses of champagne, two vodka and tonics, plus a glass of wine.

At the Royal Thames Yacht Club he says Mr Sutherland told a female friend and senior business client of him: “Nice guy, nice guy, shame he takes too much cocaine.”

This prompted the confrontation outside. “I was fuming with what he said, but I got nowhere. He had just said to one of my senior clients a lie and I grabbed him and shook him.

“I said: ‘Andrew, what the f*** did you do that for? Why did you say that?’ That was it.”

Bonham Christie was immediately discharged by Recorder Annabel Darlow QC, following the jury’s verdict and did not apply for any costs.