MPs have voted to suspend flasher Peter Bone after he bullied an aide and exposed himself in a hotel room.
The move paves the way for a by-election in Mr Bone's Wellingborough constituency, leaving Rishi Sunak with another headache after two bruising defeats last week. The MP, who was stripped of the Tory whip last week, left his victim a "broken shell" after the "physical, emotional, psychological abuse" he endured.
Mr Bone was found by a report to have bullied a former aide and exposed his private parts in a Madrid hotel room. A watchdog said he had repeatedly asked his researcher to give him massages and threw pens and other office equipment at him. In one incident, Mr Bone is alleged to have struck the aide on the back of his head and told him: “You’re having a thick day and I thought that would help”. Parliament's Independent Expert (IEP) Panel claimed: "This was a deliberate and conscious abuse of power using a sexual mechanism: indecent exposure.”
Speaking to BBC News, the alleged complainant, who remains anonymous, detailed what he claimed to be the "physical, emotional, psychological abuse" he had suffered. He said: "It unfortunately became this horrid, brutal, dark experience that left me a broken shell of the young man I once was".
He added: "Peter's behaviour was erratic. His temper was often explosive. Like a pendulum he would go from one type of kind of personality to another. It was very hard to predict, and that kind of left me feeling quite under siege. They call it a siege mentality in terms of the relentless shouting, the screaming, the hitting."
The former aide, who said the experience led to him being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, also criticised the Tories handling of his complaint, claiming he was "effectively ghosted" by the party. He also claimed he was "never given a clear timeline of events or even an estimated one" regarding his complaint to the Conservatives. He said he was left "in this kind of limbo" and "effectively ghosted for three years by the party."
