A drag artist has claimed the policeman who murdered Sarah Everard sexually molested and propositioned him for sex in a Kent pub in 2018.
The performer told the Sunday People that he did not report the incident at the New Inn pub in Deal — near former officer Wayne Couzens' home — but later recognised his face in media reports of his conviction for the crime.
"I said to my partner ‘That’s him’. I feel so awful at what happened to Sarah," he said.
The alleged victim had gone to see a band at the New Inn with his partner on the night in question.
"I was wearing a turquoise and silver leotard with beads showing off my legs, and I was wearing the same colour feather boa," he recalled. "I was getting served and this man said to me, ‘Are you having a good night?’. I went ‘Yes, thank you’ and I thought no more about it."
Then Couzens, a married father of two and an officer in the Metropolitan Police Service's VIP protection unit, began touching the drag queen's bottom.
"Then he went round to my groin and I went, ‘Oi, stop that. My partner’s over there’," he said. "He went ‘Do you know who I am?’ and I went, ‘Do you know who I f*cking am?’. I told him my drag stage name and he said, ‘I’m a policeman.’ I said to him, ‘I don’t give a f*ck who you are, you do not touch me’."
“After I calmed down a little bit, he went, ‘Do you want to go round the back where it’s dark and give me a bl**job and we can do things?’ I said to him, ‘I’ve told you, p*** off'.”
The performer said he took his drink and went back to his table to tell his boyfriend what had happened — stressing that Couzens could easily have overpowered him physically.
"I wanted to go to the toilet, so I said to my partner, ‘Will you come with me please, in case he’s still at the bar’. We went through the bar to the toilet and he had vanished," he said.
"I’m only tiny, even in my heels. I’m much smaller than him. He was tall and had short crew-cut ginger hair and a short beard when I saw him. He was in blue trousers and a white T-shirt," he recalled.
"It’s lucky I didn’t go outside. Can you imagine if I went down that alley? My partner has said to me, ‘You could have been stabbed in the alley and left somewhere else’."
The alleged victim finally made a formal statement to the police last Tuesday after hiding the shame of the incident for three years.
"I haven’t told any of my friends about it – I’m embarrassed. Whenever I go out now, I stay close to my partner, I won’t wander. I don’t go to the bar on my own now".
Couzens was given a rare whole-life sentence last month for his shocking murder of Everard on March 3 this year, which has undermined public confidence in the police and prompted calls for all serving officers to be re-vetted.