Malcolm Fawcett, 57, has been accused of groping four women after meeting them at Brancepath Castle Golf Club near Durham
A 57-year-old golf club captain has claimed he was a victim of a female groper at a champagne bar and that women players would kiss him in front of his wife, a court has heard.
Malcolm Fawcett, 57, a former police officer with 30 years experience, has claimed he is not ‘a sexual predator’ after four women accused him of carrying out 11 sexual assaults in a two-year campaign of harassment.
He also likened himself to a ‘father figure’ to his accusers, who were younger than his daughters, who he met at Brancepath Castle Golf Club near Durham.
Fawcett denied all assaults at Teesside Crown court today.
In an interview at Consett police station in County Durham in July 2018 Fawcett told Detective Constable Gary Agnew that he enjoyed a ‘friendly, positive, tactile sort of relationship’ with his accusers.
He said one of them was taller than his wife which had led to an accidental brushing of her breast when he gave her a friendly cuddle, but denied the groping, touching and slapping he is accused off.
One of the women claimed that Fawcett groped her bottom as he bought her bubbly in The Champagne Bar in Durham.
Fawcett, second left, has claimed that he is a victim of groping and also said that he was a ‘father figure’ to his accusers
Fawcett claimed that in fact he was the one groped by a woman who was not one of his accusers, but was in their company.
He told DC Agnew he was in the bar with friends when the women he knew from the historic Durham golf club came in with their partners.
He said: ‘They came in and sought me out, they kissed me when they came in. That is what our relationship was.
‘I bought them all drinks, including their partners, it cost me a bloody fortune.’
He said that after he’d bought the expensive round the women from the club dispersed but one member of the group – not a complainant in the case – approached him later as they left.
He told DC Agnew: ‘I was kissed fully on the mouth two or three times by some of them and at some time I have had my bollocks felt. It was not just once, I said “oh stop man”.
Four women have made 11 allegations of sexual assault against Fawcett after he met them at Brancepath Castle Golf Club near Durham, pictured
‘That person did it again in full view of my mate. My mate just said: ‘I cannot believe I have just seen that.”‘
He said that women from the club would kiss him in front of his wife on occasions.
He said: ‘They would kiss you on the mouth. It puts my wife off and it puts me off. It would happen in front of my wife, it would be “Well done Mal, Captain” and give me a kiss on the mouth.
‘It sounds like I’m making it out to be a knocking shop but it was not.’
He admitted one accidental touching of one complainant’s breast, saying her height in comparison to his wife’s had turned an innocent hug into an embarrassing incident.
Fawcett pictured leaving Teesside Crown court last week, where he is standing trial
Fawcett said: ‘When I hug my wife my arms go over her shoulder, but she (the complainant) is taller and my hand caught one of her breasts and I have gone “I am sorry, I didn’t mean that please don’t think it was inappropriate.”‘
In a later interview in September of this year Fawcett was told that two more complainants had come forward with allegations about him.
He told the same officer: ‘I am not a sexual predator, this has got me absolutely destroyed.’
The alleged victims in the case say that Fawcett would kiss them and intimately touch them in rooms and corridors at the golf club.
One claimed he warmed his hands after coming on from the course by plunging one down her T-shirt between her breasts.
Another claimed he groped her bottom in a corridor and said ‘Oops I almost lost a finger’.
She also told how he twice ‘dry humped’ her as she bent to pick something up in the clubhouse.
Fawcett allegedly asked one woman for ‘dirty pictures’ in return for help with buying a car and asked the same woman to visit him in the showers with a towel.
Jurors have heard women at the club thought Fawcett was ‘creepy’ but his role as club captain meant he was considered too ‘influential’ to make a complaint about in the early stages of his two year campaign of sexual assault.
Fawcett, of Framwellgate Moor, Durham, denies 11 charges of sexual assault dating from January 2016 until January 2018.
Five of the charges relate to one of Fawcett’s four alleged victims, whilst there are three against another, two charges for the third woman and one charge in connection with the final alleged victim.
The trial, due to last three weeks, continues.