A woman who was sexually assaulted by her friend’s partner after he crashed their girls’ night out has today spoken out about her 24-hour ordeal and told how she now suffers with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
Hannah Gregory, 38, waived her right to anonymity after her attacker was jailed for three years today in a bid to encourage other victims of sexual assault to come forward.
The ex-youth offending team officer, who lives near Lancaster, exclusively revealed to MailOnline how she has been left with ‘horrific nightmares’ and the ‘smell of alcohol breath and male sweat will haunt her forever’.
Her attacker, construction boss David Horton, 47, the partner of her best friend of 25 years, sexually assaulted her during a girls’ weekend that he gatecrashed in May 2018.
A court heard how he touched her bottom, put his hand up her skirt and groped Ms Gregory repeatedly over the course of the night – in scenes captured on CCTV in Soho’s Sushi Samba and the Star and Garter pub.
When the group returned to their twin room at the four-star Apex Hotel, which Horton was never booked into, Ms Gregory went to sleep to try to forget what she had been through – and planned on leaving the next day.
At 2am she woke to Horton on top of her. She knows his fingers were inside her but she doesn’t know what happened before she woke up, and the impact of the night has left her with PTSD.
Horton was today jailed for three years for four counts of sexual assault and one charge of assault by penetration.
Hannah Gregory (pictured), 38, waived her right to anonymity exclusively with MailOnline to encourage other victims of sexual assault to come forward after she was left with ‘horrific nightmares’
The ex youth-offending team officer (pictured right), who lives in a small village near Lancaster, was assaulted by the partner of her best friend of 25 years’, David Horton (left), 47, during a London girls’ weekend he crashed in May 2018
Speaking to MailOnline, she said: ‘It’s all been so overwhelming. I needed him to get a custodial sentence to put him in the same position of fear and vulnerability he put me.
‘My motivation was always to make sure he doesn’t do it to anyone else and at least now I can sleep easy knowing for the next few years that will be a certainty. It won’t ruin my life, I won’t let it.
‘I am very relieved he’s not walking out the door. It’s been a really hard day. He didn’t even flinch. There was absolutely no remorse.
‘I am a self-assured person but I’ve never felt ever in my life so stuck in a situation that I didn’t know how to get out of without causing a scene which would then cause more drama.
‘I wasn’t screened when I gave evidence. I wanted him to see me but he sat with his mask up to his eyes and looked at the floor the entire time. I wanted eye contact just to see but I didn’t get that.’
In her victim impact statement, read at Inner London Crown Court today, Ms Gregory spoke about her battle with insomnia.
She told MailOnline: ‘Because it’s something that happened while I was asleep I do not like being woken up. If you wake me up I freak out.
‘I don’t like being touched when I’m asleep. I still have horrific nightmares about the pressure on my chest and waking up and seeing someone in front of me.
‘Sleep deprivation is awful so I have not functioned very well at all. I’ve not been a mum to my kids very well. I haven’t been able to get out of bed. I haven’t been me.’
Horton (pictured) touched her bottom, put his hand up her skirt and groped Ms Gregory repeatedly over the course of the night – in scenes captured on CCTV in Soho’s Sushi Samba and the Star and Garter pub
She told MailOnline she now struggles in crowds, had a panic attack on the tube because of the smell of sweat when she arrived for the trial, and had to quit her job as a parish council clerk officer because of severe fatigue.
‘I will never be able to forget the smell of alcohol breathe combined with male sweat as I woke up with him assaulting me,’ she said in her victim impact statement.
Ms Gregory, who has an undergraduate degree in Criminology and was always an A* student, originally failed her second year of an accountancy diploma because of her PTSD. She is yet to complete her third year.
And although Ms Gregory and her ex-boyfriend got back together following the assault – they again split when her PTSD symptoms overwhelmed the relationship.
Ms Gregory said the entire night was constructed to make her feel uncomfortable, out of control and unable to speak out against Horton’s harassment.
She had been best friends with Horton’s partner for 25 years – after meeting at school. She was the godmother to Ms Gregory’s children and Ms Gregory was bridesmaid at her friend’s previous wedding.
She only found out during the trial her best friend (pictured during the night out) had been in the hotel lobby dealing with reception after Horton soiled himself in a lift and he had used her brief absence as an opportunity
But now, other than a few brief text messages immediately following the night out, they don’t speak. Her friend remains in a relationship with Horton – they were briefly engaged – and he continued to deny any knowledge of his behaviour throughout the trial.
During the night out Ms Gregory was consistently on the back foot. She didn’t have any money on her because she only brought cash, which the majority of pubs and restaurants in London do not take and her friend had their hotel room key.
‘My friend said she would pay for everything on card and at the end I would give her the money. I had no physical money on me, I left it in the hotel,’ she said.
‘She had the hotel key and I was in the middle of London. There was no way I could go “I’m going to the hotel room” now without having to explain why I was leaving. I couldn’t think of a response having known her 25 years that she would believe other than that there was something wrong.
‘If I had said there was something wrong she would have come with me and he would have come with her. I couldn’t work out how to escape. I struggled with that most. I felt trapped in there and totally out of control. I felt completely violated.’
Horton openly mocked her in court and consistently accused her of lying or of misunderstanding the evening.
She said: ‘He was so confident and so knowing that he’d get away with it. The laughing and joking and the creepness. Every time I said no he thought it was funny.’
A post Ms Gregory shared on Facebook following Horton’s sentencing last month
Horton, then working as a company director at a construction firm, told police he thought he was touching his girlfriend, who was asleep in the adjacent single bed.
The businessman was convicted of four counts of sexual assault and one charge of assault by penetration by a jury last month.
Ms Gregory and her friend had originally travelled down to London for a girls’ weekend – which involved going to see the American ventriloquist Jeff Dunham at Wembley – when her friend asked her to meet her new partner, Horton.
She initially expected him to join them in a bar for a few hours and then leave, but he stayed for the entire weekend.
‘David took us to various bars buying expensive rounds of drinks and boasting about how he was an important person in London,’ Ms Gregory said.
He drank to excess, with his share of the alcohol bill totalling over £400 and soiled himself in the hotel’s elevator on the Saturday night after mistaking the room’s door to the corridor for the toilet.
That was when his partner had to be called down to reception, and Horton launched the assault.
‘I can’t understand how anybody under any circumstance would think there was any consent when somebody is sleeping,’ Ms Gregory added.
Her fitbit proved she was sound asleep when Horton attacked her. She added: ‘It wasn’t even like I thought I was asleep and I was awake. I was dead to the world asleep. I woke up with his face next to mine. I don’t understand how that’s justified. I don’t understand what his defence is to that at all.’
Horton (pictured outside court) openly mocked Ms Gregory during the trial and consistently accused her of lying or of misunderstanding the evening
Ms Gregory wants to encourage other women who have been victims of the same type of crime to come forward.
She said: ‘I can’t give any words of encouragement other than it’s worth the pain. It has messed my life up miserably for the time the case has taken. But I do feel like it would have been worse if I’d watched the news in 12 months’ time and seen his face for doing something to another woman.
‘I’d have had to live with that and I don’t know what would be worse. Doing this possibly means I won’t ever see that. Not talking about it and it happening to other people. I don’t know how I would live with myself.’
Ms Gregory struggled immediately following the assault to get her case heard, with a trip to the local police station ending in her being sent away with the number of a London station she needed to call.
When she called the London number she was referred back to the original police station. She said the system is flawed, but she cannot fault the actual officers who took her statements and supported her throughout.
In her victim impact statement today Ms Gregory said: ‘I do not consider myself a victim seeking vengeance, for me it is not possible to right the wrong, what has happened cannot be undone and the events of that day along with the ordeal of reporting it to the police and all that is associated with giving evidence at a trial will stay with me always.’
Ravinder Saimbhi, in mitigation, said Ms Gregory’s friend, who is still with Horton, had written a letter explaining the trouble the trial had caused them.
She said: ‘It’s right that the last three years have been an ordeal for her but I do also ask you to balance the ordeal that Mr Horton and his partner has suffered.
‘It’s been an ordeal for a man who contested the counts.
‘He has lost the reputation he has. He has lost the work that he has. He has lost the comfortable lifestyle that he had.
‘He has lost his character although I appreciate he does have previous convictions for drink driving but they do not indicate a man who is in any way a predatory individual who has committed these offences.’
Passing sentence, Judge Usha Karu, Honorary Recorder of Southwark, jailed Horton for three years as well as an indefinite notification requirement and the victim surcharge.
Judge Karu said: ‘You have repeatedly denied any illicit behaviour in the hotel bedroom and did not accept your wrongdoing.
Ms Gregory struggled immediately following the assault to get her case heard, with a trip to the local police station ending in her being sent away with the number of a London station she needed to call (pictured)
‘The trial took place earlier this year. I have read the two victim personal statements and she has read the second statement in open court.
‘Her distress and anxiety is plain to see. She explained how her life has changed forever. She now suffers from PTSD, she does not go out much and keeps to herself.
‘Her mental health has suffered enormously and she continues to have flashbacks and she is not the mother that she would like to be to her children.
‘Her further education has also been adversely affected her further education.
‘This was persistent and sustained assaults on a woman who repeatedly rejected your advances. I have read the letter from [your partner] that describes your changed behaviour. You have lost your employment, your reputation and your hitherto good character.
‘Reading the pre-sentence report that due to the failure to understand your wrongdoing you have no empathy or remorse.
‘There can be no doubt these offences cross the custody threshold.’
Horton, of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, who was previously bailed to an address in Cornwall, put his head in his hands as he was told his custodial sentence.
A week after the assaults Ms Gregory was encouraged to report the allegations to police after talking to her ex-boyfriend and close friend, who was a serving soldier in the British Army.
Earlier in the evening Horton repeatedly groped the woman’s bottom during a night out with his partner, a judge at Inner London Crown Court (pictured) heard
During the trial, prosecutor David Povall said: ‘It became clear she that was very distressed and disturbed, not herself. It took five days after she came home before she went to the police about what had happened.’
When questioned, Horton told police he ‘got to cop a feel’ earlier in the day before suggesting he was ‘incredibly drunk’ and could not remember what happened.
He said: ‘There was lots of flirty innuendos and conversation throughout the day.
‘We were talking about boobs, my partner’s boobs, the alleged victim’s boobs, and if I remember I think I got to cop a feel of both.’
Ms Gregory explained she is open with her sexuality and was only remarking on her need to wear a padded bra, which she couldn’t feel her breasts through.
Horton took this as an opportunity to touch her and it was not consensual, she said.
CCTV was played during the trial that showed Horton’s hand up her skirt, filmed as the group took a smiling picture together. Ms Gregory said she was pleased the CCTV revealed what was really happening.
In his police interview, which was played to the jury, Horton said: ‘We were getting in the taxi and I think I again copped a feel of the woman’s boobs and my partner pulled it away.’
‘Was that intentional touching of her boob?’ the officer asked.
‘I mean I was incredibly drunk… I only know because my partner told me,’ Horton said.
Recounting his version of events in the hotel room, he told police he drunkenly ‘soiled’ himself and ended up asleep on the floor where he accidentally touched the woman’s leg.
‘Earlier in the morning I sort of woke up, again disoriented… so I put my arm up and I did touch the alleged victim’s leg but I felt it move and thought “Ooh crikey, wrong side”, and got back into bed with my partner.’
Giving evidence Horton told jurors the woman was being ‘very flirty’ and ‘open’ about her sexual preferences which made him feel ‘titillated’.
Ms Gregory said the way Horton twisted her words made her anxious in conversations, as she worried others would misinterpret her intentions.
She said: ‘It’s ridiculous. I’m so worried people are going to twist the stuff I say and do.’
Ms Gregory hopes she will finally be able to take her life back following the three-year ordeal, safe in the knowledge Horton is locked away.