AN aristocrat sexually assaulted a woman during a drug-fuelled birthday party at his stately home, a court has been told.
Euan Tennant, 39, is alleged to have attacked the woman as the pair lay in bed along with a friend at the Glen House mansion near Innerleithen in the Borders.
The alleged victim claimed Tennant stripped naked and began stroking her leg before going on to sexually assault her as the pair lay in bed in the dark.
The woman, who cannot be identified due to legal reasons, told a jury at Edinburgh Sheriff Court on Tuesday that she was forced to flee the bedroom in tears after Tennant had assaulted her.
Tennant denies the alleged sex attack – claiming the contact between the pair was consensual – and is standing trial at the capital’s sheriff court on indictment this week.
The woman, who is in her mid 20s, gave her evidence from behind a screen and said she had been invited by a friend to attend the two-day event at Glen House to celebrate Tennant’s 36th birthday.
She said her friend and Tennant had been close friends for around 15 years after meeting at university but that she had not met him before attending the party in July 2019.
The woman said on the second evening she and her friend had retired to their large bedroom – named The Valley – along with Tennant.
The three chatted for around 90 minutes and the woman told the court Tennant and her friend had taken quantities of cocaine while in the room.
She said Tennant then asked if he could spend the night by sleeping on top of the covers of the “huge four-poster bed”.
The two women agreed but Tennant, an electrician by trade, then asked if he could take his trousers off and get into the large bed beside them.
The alleged victim said both women agreed and that she had “felt safe he would not do anything”.
She told the jury: “I was facing [my friend] almost in a foetal position. Within a couple of minutes of us switching the lights off I could feel Euan’s finger touching my knee and stroking my knee.
“I didn’t do anything hoping he would stop and take his hands away."
The court was told that Tennant then moved his hand up her leg.
She added: "I was just thinking, ‘What the hell is he doing?’.
“I didn’t say anything as I didn’t want [my friend] knowing what he was doing. It was quite intimate touching.
“I was being a still as possible and I wanted to pretend to be asleep hoping he would stop but he didn’t."
The court then heard that Tennant touched the woman intimately and she was left "frozen" in fear.
She added: “I was very embarrassed.”
The woman said she was “sobbing” as she lay in the bed and Tennant carried on with the sex assault.
The alleged victim told the jury her friend woke up and went to the toilet and while the pair were alone Tennant had said to her “I’m sorry if I offended you”.
She said her friend came back to bed and after she had fallen asleep Tennant had continued to assault her.
She said she later managed to escape the bedroom in tears and subsequently told her friend what had happened to her within the bedroom.
The pair then left the 20-bedroom 19th century mansion in a taxi later that morning and the woman contacted the police to report the alleged attack.
When questioned by Tennant’s defence advocate Victoria Young the woman strenuously denied she had given her consent to be touched sexually by Tennant during the alleged incident on July 27, 2019.
The trial in front of Sheriff Kenneth Campbell QC continues.
Tennant, who lives in a farm cottage on the Glen estate, inherited the mansion after the death of his mother in July 2018 but the property and 3,500-acre estate is believed to be managed by his stepfather.
