Oliver Smail, 31, who has a Master of Architecture qualification from Kingston University was convicted of touching the woman, who joined his group’s all-night pub and bar crawl, between her legs.
“I remember him trying to touch me and moving to the other side of the sofa,” she told the jury at Inner London Crown Court, adding she woke at 6.30am with her underwear and tight spanx shorts around her knees.
She insisted Smail, of St. Catherine’s Court, Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire and a former Planning Support Officer with Aylesbury Vale District Council groped her between the legs as he lay alongside her on the living-room sofa.
He denied, but was convicted last Friday by the jury of one count of sexual assault by penetration at his friend’s two-bedroom apartment in Stead Street, Walworth on September 8, 2019.
Smail was bailed until October 28 for sentencing.
“I woke up and that’s what was happening,” the woman told the trial. “There was a point in the night I was aware of him.
“I was aware of this because of the way he was touching me. I think he was completely out of it. Very intoxicated.”
The woman told the trial she began drinking in Dalston’s trendy ‘Jones & Sons’ which offers a two-hour ‘Off The Wagon’ brunch of never-ending Prosecco.
“We were drinking for two-and-a-half hours,” she told the court.
She was celebrating a birthday and she and her two female friend’s joined Smail’s mostly-male group and continued drinking cocktails at the nearby ‘Three Sheets’ bar.
Smail and friends Tom Madden and Alexander Hodgson-Doughty all know each other from the University of Kent.
They moved onto other local pubs and bars, continuing to drink and both the woman and Smail snorted cocaine during the evening and she also took an ‘ecstasy’ pill.
“I have been very honest that I took ‘ecstasy’ and cocaine. I have no recollection of who gave it to me, it was one of the three men.”
The group then took a minicab to Elephant & Castle with the vague idea of going to the Ministry of Sound nightclub, but instead bought a bottle of gin from and off licence and continued drinking at Alex’s flat.
“I am not denying I was drunk,” she added, recalling a short chat she had with Smail that evening. “I got the feeling he was flirting, but from early on I was not interested and made that clear.”
After a few rounds of gin and tonics at the flat Alex disappeared into his bedroom with the complainant’s friend, leaving her to sleep on the living-room couch.
The next morning she burst into the bedroom to complain about Smail to her friend, who asked him: “Did you finger my friend while she was asleep? Did you do that?”
The friend said Smail tried to hide under a pillow and replied: “I thought she consented.”
When cross-examined he insisted he was referring to her consent to leg touching and nothing more intimate.
He quickly put his jacket on and left the apartment as the complainant’s friend continued shouting and demanding the police be called.
Smail, who runs his own design firm, told the jury all he did was rub the woman’s leg when he woke up in the middle of the night to find it in his crotch.
He was also drinking in ‘Jones & Sons’, where he also confessed to taking cocaine. “It is not something I regularly do, it was pushed towards me during brunch.”
Regarding the complainant he said: “I didn’t find her sexually attractive,” but admitted texting a friend during the evening to describe her as “cute.”
“I was really quite drunk,” he admitted, explaining his motivation for squeezing onto the couch was to sleep and not any sexual motive.
“I woke up with something rubbing against my crotch.
“I was in a very deep sleep, very hazy and my reaction was to feel the leg. I kind of rubbed it, squeezed it like a massage just to see if it was a girl or a guy or a reaction of some sort.
“She kind of squeezed my hand and rubbed it and nothing was said by anyone.”
Smail claims he got up to sleep in the spare room, but Alex told him it was being rented via Air B&B so he returned to the couch.
“When I woke up I was being kicked in the head. It was not as hard kick and I took it as a meaning she did not want me on the sofa I had been rubbing her calf earlier on.
“I was so dazed and confused. I did not understand why I was being kicked.”
Smail denied pulling down the woman’s underwear. “I was not aware of what she was wearing under her dress. I never moved any of her clothing.
“I only had one hand that was free at any time.”
He was questioned two weeks later and charged over two years after that. “It was upsetting. I remember my heart racing and having this massive weight on my shoulders and having to trust in this system that I am going through.”
When questioned by the officers Smail admitted: “Obviously she is a pretty girl and I am a man so I may make a few moves.
Insisting he would do nothing without the woman’s consent he recalled the moment she kicked him in the head. “I remember thinking: ‘Oh God. I totally misread that situation.’
“I grabbed a pillow and slept on the floor until I was woken up by her friend pulling it away.”
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