Former Tory MP Charlie Elphicke, who represented Dover and Deal and jailed for sex assaults is due to be released from jail
11:44, 21 August 2021
updated: 14:23, 21 August 2021
Disgraced former Tory MP, Charlie Elphicke, is due for release next month after serving half of his prison time for sexual assaults on two women.
Elphicke, who represented Dover and Deal, was sentenced to two years in jail in September, after being found guilty of the assaults a decade apart.
One charge related to an incident in 2007 where Elphicke chased a victim around his Westminster home after assaulting her, while chanting "I'm a naughty Tory" in a singsong voice.
The woman, who was in her 30s at the time and known to Elphicke, later went to police.
The second complainant, in her 20s, was groped on her breast by the former MP, who also ran his hand up her leg, during two separate incidents in 2016.
Sentencing him last year for the three assaults, Mrs Justice Whipple told Elphicke: “You’re a sexual predator who used your success and respectability as a cover."
Elphicke, 50, has always denied all three allegations but last summer a jury took a day-and-a-half to find him guilty, after a trial at Southwark Crown Court.
His wife, Natalie, who later succeeded him as Dover and Deal MP, announced she was leaving her husband of 25 years, shortly after heading away from the court when the verdict was returned.
His release will come six months since Elphicke lost a Court of Appeal challenge against his jail term.
Lawyers representing the former Conservative MP argued at a hearing in London in March that his sentence was too long and should have been suspended.
His appeal bid was supported by wife who believes he suffered a miscarriage of justice.
But, rejecting his appeal bid, Lady Justice Carr said the Crown Court judge was entitled to impose the sentence she did.
She said Elphicke had used his “success and respectability as cover."
The Court of Appeal also heard how Elphicke had endured two spells of isolation in prison, one because of a transfer after a court error and on another occasion after he contracted Covid-19.
Ministry of Justice guidelines state any offender given a fixed term sentence is normally automatically released half way through their term.
