A British Army soldier joked about ‘molesting’ two female colleagues hours before sexually assaulting them both, a court heard today.
Private Joshua Rideout allegedly groped his fellow soldiers while watching a film with them and is claimed to have even ripped apart the jeans one woman was wearing.
A court heard one of the women was on the phone to a male soldier when Pt Rideout ‘butted in’ and said, ‘do you want to help me molest these two girls?’
Later that evening, he is accused of sexually assaulting the same woman and her friend, while the three of them watched an Ice Age movie in her room.
Bulford Military Court, Wiltshire, heard evidence from the female soldier, who said she and the other woman were ‘best friends’.
Speaking about the ‘molest’ comment, she told the hearing: ‘I just thought it was a joke. I didn’t take it personally or seriously at the time.
‘After that I went back to my room and was just chilling.’
But the woman said she was joined later by her friend and Pt Rideout. She then went out to have a cigarette and make a phone call before returning to find the male soldier on top of her friend.
She said: ‘I came back into the room. I saw Pt Rideout with her phone in his hand. He was on top of her, he had his legs either side of her and with his legs he was pinning down her arms.
‘She said ‘help’… she was trying to get him off.
‘I just thought it was play-fighting. I walked out of the room, I didn’t think anything of it and went out to carry on my phone call.’
But when she came back and carried on watching the film, the other woman messaged her to say Pt Rideout had tried to sexually assault her and ignored her pleas for him to get away from her.
Despite this revelation, the three of them laid in bed together and carried on watching the film, as the female soldier told the court: ‘I find it hard to tell people to get out of my room.’
Later, when the other woman had left the room, Pt Rideout turned his attention to this female soldier.
She said: ‘I already had massive holes in my jeans because that was the design of them. He said “I’ve got the urge to rip your jeans” or something like that and I said “don’t”.
‘We were sat on the bed and he literally just grabbed my jeans and started ripping them.
‘I told him to stop but he just carried on. He ended up ripping them from the top all the way down to the bottom.
‘[The other female soldier] came back in when he got to the bottom and she was trying to stop him from doing it.