A Royal Military Police captain broke into the living quarters of a senior female officer and climbed into her bed where she was sleeping naked, a court martial heard.
The horrified woman officer told how she awoke in her barracks bedroom at dawn to find Captain James Key had stripped and was lying next to her with his arm draped over her torso.
Key, of 3rd Regiment, Royal Military Police, woke and told the horrified woman: “I did not touch you” before dressing and marching out of her quarters, it is alleged.
The pair had not been involved in a relationship and were not even friends, having only met each other because they shared the same mess at a British Army barracks in Ireland at the time.
The victim told Catterick Military Court she felt “violated” by Captain Key, 26, a graduate of the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst.
In a video testimony played to the court, the alleged victim said her room was in an isolated location at the barracks at the time of the incident between September and November 2020.
She told the interviewing officer: “At some point in the night my room was broken into and an individual, Lieutenant James Key, who was working as an RMP officer, got into bed where I was.
“It was early in the morning, there was light coming through my window though my curtains were closed. I felt movement in my bed which woke me up.
“I was groggy and just waking up but I felt his arm over me while I was asleep and I realised the covers were not up.
“I felt an arm across my torso. I don’t know whether his hands went anywhere else because I was asleep. I felt quite violated.”
She said she recalled Key getting out of bed with an apologetic look on his face which betrayed “fear and sadness” before pulling on a checked shirt and swiftly leaving the room.
As he stood up, he told her: “I did not touch you,” she claimed.
The female officer continued: “There was such a visceral reaction in my body. There was both the emotional toll and the visceral reaction from my body.”
She said that she and Key were not friends and did not know each other well, leaving her perplexed as to why he targeted her room.
In the weeks leading up to the alleged assault he had turned up at her room with a bottle of whisky and spoke to her for around 15 minutes about the break-up of his relationship, she said.
She said: “I’m not attracted to him or anything like that, we were not friends, he came to me once to talk about his relationship breakdown.” The evening before the incident she had been for a meal in the mess and returned home alone before Key broke into her room hours later, the court heard.
Lieutenant Commander Andy Ramage, prosecuting, told the court: “The complainant did not consent to the touching and Captain Key did not believe she was consenting.”
Days later the woman confronted Captain Key when they met on a stairwell in the barracks.
She said: “He told me he was so sorry and I told him never to do it again, or something like that. He kept on saying: “I am so sorry.”
At first the woman did not make a complaint but the effects of the attack crept up on her over time.
She told the court: “I started suffering from panic attacks and all sorts of delayed presentations.”
After seeking the help of the support group Salute Her UK, she eventually made a complaint of sexual assault against Key in 2024, by which time he had been promoted from Lieutentant to Captain.
Key denies one count of sexual assault.
Lieutenant Commander Ramage told the court that Key answered no comment when interviewed by service investigators.
He added: “Captain Key will say in his defence that if there was a male in the complainant’s room who acted in the manner alleged, it was not him, it was someone else, or the complainant had made up the allegation.”
The trial, set to last three to four days, continues.