Royal Navy engineer, 25, ‘grabbed fellow sailor’s bottom’ after boozy barbecue

A Royal Navy engineer sexually assaulted a female sailor while she climbed a ladder after touching another crewmate inappropriately, a court martial has heard. 

Able Seaman Daniel Goffey, 25, denied three counts of sexual assault before a court martial at Bulford Military Court in Wiltshire yesterday.

The alleged incidents all happened after an ‘alcohol-fuelled’ barbecue onboard the £3.1billion HMS Prince of Wales aircraft carrier. 

Goffey is accused of touching the bottoms of two fellow sailors, including one as she climbed a ladder on the ship.

However his defence said he could not have balanced on the ladder and grabbed the woman at the same time due to his ‘intoxicated’ state. 

The court heard Goffey approached his first victim when she was stood with a group of sailors.

Captain Rebecca Slee, prosecuting, said he ‘put one arm around her waist and one on her bottom and tried to pull her towards him’, while the victim said he was ‘intoxicated, slurring his words, put his arms around me and was not letting me go anywhere’. 

She added: ‘He kept saying “why are you not calm?”

The alleged incidents all happened after an alcohol-fuelled barbecue onboard the £3.1billion HMS Prince of Wales aircraft carrier (pictured in February arriving into Portsmouth Harbour)

‘I said “get off me, I don’t know you”. I felt trapped, he wasn’t letting me go anywhere.’

The sailor managed to push Goffey away but he later went into her mess room – an area onboard where sailors socialise, eat and live – as she was watching TV, pecking her ‘all over’ her face as she put up her hands to stop him.  

Soon after this Goffey approached his second victim, the martial heard.    

She told the court: ‘He put his right hand on my waist and then, with his left hand, touched my right butt-cheek,’ she told the court.

‘I felt very uncomfortable and moved away.’

A group of sailors tried to draw Goffey away from the mess area but, as they went up the ladder one-by-one, he allegedly assaulted the sailor by grabbing her bottom.   

She said: ‘We all went up single-file. I felt two hands on either side of my butt-cheeks for about two seconds.

‘I turned around to push him away and he just sniggered. I slapped his hands away.’

The court martial heard later on, in another mess, Goffey would not leave the victims alone and made them ‘very uncomfortable’.

Barrister Helen Easterbrook, defending Goffey, told the court he could not have balanced himself to touch the woman’s bottom with both hands on the ladder because of his intoxicated state. 

Goffey, now understood to be based at the HMS Nelson in Portsmouth, Hampshire, denies three counts of sexual assault.

The Court Martial trial continues.