Emily Hunt, 38, said she ‘woke up naked and terrified on a hotel bed’ after being attacked
A mother-of-one claimed today that she woke up in a £300-a-night hotel next to a man she had never met after being drugged and raped.
Emily Hunt, 38, woke up naked and terrified at the Town Hall Hotel in Bethnal Green, East London, with no memory of the previous five hours after a Sunday lunch date with her father.
The strategy consultant immediately contacted police, but accuses them of behaving ‘abysmally’ and trying to dissuade her from making a complaint.
Several months later prosecutors declined to bring a case, citing CCTV footage which showed her and the alleged rapist being ‘flirty’ in the bar.
Miss Hunt, who lives in Hackney but is originally from New York, has now launched a crowd-funding campaign to bring a private prosecution.
Miss Hunt has already raised more than £8,500 towards her goal, which will be spent on the services of one of the UK’s top sexual offence QCs.
And she told the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire programme today: ‘I was kind of in and out for a while when I properly came to. I pretty quickly had this lightbulb moment that I’d been drugged. I’d never felt like that before.
‘I’d never lost five hours of my life completely and totally, and wound up somewhere where I didn’t know how I’d got there with someone I’d never seen before.’
Miss Hunt told the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire programme today about her alleged ordeal
Talking about the man, she said: ‘He seemed quite relaxed, he was just watching TV, kind of laughing along. He seemed sober at the time, and I found out later that he hadn’t even had a drop of alcohol – he was completely sober.
‘I’m a bit fuzzy on (what I did next). I know that I sort of leaned over, got my things – they were on a pile next to me on the floor, and I gathered up my belongings and my handbag and kind of hid for at least ten minutes.
‘I phoned a friend and said, you know, ‘there’s something really wrong going on here. I don’t feel OK, I feel in a way that I’ve never felt before – and there’s this guy’. And my friend rang the police.’
And recalling what she remembered before the alleged attack, Miss Hunt added: ‘The very last thing I remember is having lunch with my dad.
‘We were in a local restaurant that we go to quite a lot, and we were having lunch. And then the conversation went a bit weird, and that’s the last thing I remember.’
Miss Hunt also appeared on ITV’s This Morning today, saying how conversation had become ‘weird’ with her father during their lunch.
Miss Hunt also appeared on ITV’s This Morning today, talking about what led up to the ‘attack’
Miss Hunt told Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield about her crowdfunding campaign
She said it later emerged that they had both drunk Grappa, and he had also had some strange symptoms from a couple of sips of it – while she had two glasses.
CCTV footage showed her being flirty with the alleged attacker, but she believed she was dosed with the date rape drug GHB – possibly twice.
She told presenters Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield of waking up after the alleged attack: ‘I was naked and underneath a bed spread.
‘That was actually the first thing I remember because it had a really particular texture, and I woke up to this feeling of ‘where am I because this isn’t mine?’
‘I could feel it on my naked skin. I went in and out for a little while, and then when I finally came to, I looked over my shoulder and there was this man who I had literally never seen before.’
She wants her case to be a ‘pilot’ for a new charity which will also fund other cases on behalf of women let down by the system.
One of the rooms at the five-star Town Hall Hotel in Bethnal Green, East London, where mother-of-one Ms Hunt claims she was raped in May 2015
Ms Hunt, of Hackney, has now launched a crowdfunding page to try to bring the man to justice
Speaking to the Daily Mail yesterday, she said: ‘Prosecutors need to be pursuing these cases a lot harder than they have been and if they are not willing to, I will.
‘I am sickened by the fact this comes down to money but at the same time I am very lucky to live in a country where this is possible. In the US there is no equivalent.
‘The public interest in these cases needs to be reassessed. Research shows the overwhelming majority of women who say they have been raped are telling the truth and rapists will go on to rape again.’
Miss Hunt’s life was turned upside down after the attack at the hotel in May 2015.
She suspects that a man she had never met before drugged her before taking her back to his bedroom and raping her.
She can only remember waking up in his bed with no memory of how she got there or who he was. She telephoned a friend who contacted police.
In the following days and weeks, Miss Hunt only learned the man had sex with her from police after they interviewed him and recovered used condoms.
Ms Hunt, of Hackney, claims she was drugged and raped at the £300-a-night hotel (pictured)
Prosecutors did not bring charges, after the woman claimed she was raped at the hotel (above)
She also discovered police recovered footage of her naked and unconscious from his phone and found him carrying Viagra and LSD.
Toxicology tests did not find any suspicious drugs in Miss Hunt’s system, but she believes they were based on the wrong timings after a mistake by police.
Miss Hunt, who has a seven-year-old daughter, accused officers from Scotland Yard’s specialist sex crimes unit of not taking her seriously.
She said they ‘just did not like me’ and she was only sent to be forensically examined after telling a doctor during a follow-up appointment at a sexual health clinic.
Miss Hunt said officers suggested they suspected she was accusing the man of rape because she had been ‘unfaithful’ to her boyfriend.
And she said the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) ‘could not be bothered’ with her case, even after she appealed against their decision not to prosecute.
‘The CPS have an abysmal record when it comes to rape, and they just can’t be bothered with my case. But I still want justice,’ she said. ‘If I get the funding this case will be a slam dunk.’
The Metropolitan Police said a 35-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of rape but has been released with no further action.
A spokesman said ‘a number’ of complaints about its inquiry were examined by the independent police watchdog and were not upheld.
He added: ‘We understand that the complainant is unhappy with the outcome. We will always provide support to anyone who reports a serious sexual offence.
‘We would urge anyone who has been a victim of a sexual offence to report the matter to the police – we are here to fully investigate, listen to and support you.’
The Crown Prosecution Service said a specialist lawyer ruled there was ‘insufficient evidence’ for a realistic prospect of a guilty verdict.
A spokesman said: ‘At the request of the victim, the case was subject to a further review by the head of our rape and sexual offences team, who upheld the original decision.
‘We met the victim to explain the decision further and answer any questions she had. While we are of course sympathetic to the complainant, this is not a prosecution we were able to bring to court.’