A newlywed City analyst accused of groping a sleeping student while flying back from his honeymoon has been cleared by a jury.
Robert Van Den Bergh, 37, was defending against a charge of sexual assault after a woman said he stroked her thigh while sat next to her in economy class on a 10-hour United Airlines flight from Hawaii.
He was returning to Heathrow from a two-week honeymoon on the island of Maui on 31 December 2019 on an overnight flight.
The economics student sat beside Mr Van Den Bergh told him she had taken two sleeping pills and said Mr Van Den Bergh had joked that the pills could make her unconscious.
She told a jury at Isleworth Crown Court that she woke up to find the married father-of-one deliberately moving his hand around the middle of her thigh. She said he went on to touch her upper thigh and buttock.
Robert Scott, prosecuting, told the jury: “This went on in excess for an hour and a half before the man got up to use the lavatory and the victim got out of her seat and asked to be moved.”
The woman reported Mr Van Den Bergh to airport staff and he was escorted off the plane by police officers when it landed.
Mr Van Den Bergh, of Hackney, London, denied sexual assault.
On Thursday, the jury cleared him of the charge after he insisted he “did not at any point intentionally touch the complainant during the flight”.
He told jurors: “I refute the allegation 100 per cent. I had not started to intentionally touch her, I had not done such a thing.”
The jury of five men and seven women had found him not guilty after deliberating for two hours and 43 minutes.
Mr Van Den Bergh hugged his lawyer wife Romy after the jury verdict.
In a police interview, he told police he had been flying back from Hawaii separately from his wife because she was travelling with a friend.
He said he spoke to the women on either side of him on the flight and tossed and turned while he slept, adding: “You try to keep a distance, but it is quite difficult in economy.”
His accuser had told the court that during the alleged incident she “was very scared and I didn’t know what to do in the situation. I was just full of fear.”
Mr Scott had asked him whether he found it strange that the woman had left her seat and not returned. Mr Van Den Bergh said: “I just woke up and I didn’t know anything. I just went back to sleep.”
The case was a retrial after the first jury failed to reach a verdict in February. During the first trial Mr Van Den Bergh said he told the woman a “funny” anecdote about his former boss who once took too many sleeping pills and had to be carried off a plane.
He said she offered him a sleeping pill but he declined it. “I’ve never taken sleeping pills in my life and I was not going to start taking it.”
He also said he did not drink alcohol during the flight. “I think I did it once when I was 14 on a flight and I don’t think it’s very agreeable,” he said.
Mr Van Den Bergh added that he slept during the flight but found time to watch films including Zombieland, Chariots of Fire and Mad Max: Fury Road.
