The party-loving son of Britain’s first black Cabinet minister sexually assaulted a girl while she was asleep on the sofa and dead to the world at a friend’s party, a court has heard

Benjamin Boateng, 27, whose father is Lord Boateng, crawled under a quilt and assaulted the girl after she had passed out at the end of a night of clubbing in the West End. She had the shock of her life when she eventually woke up and discovered what was happening. The girl, 22 at the time of the sex attack on September 19, 2010 had been out clubbing with her friend Frances and ended up in the VIP area of the Jet Black club in Tottenham Court Road. Frances was also a friend of the son of the club’s owner, Ryan Bish, and they were given champagne and vodka and later invited back to Bish’s Battersea apartment to continue the party, Kingston Crown Court was told. They arrived at the property and 15 or so minutes later Boateng, whose father was Chief Secretary to the Treasury, arrived with his friend. The group carried on drinking and talking until the woman, having had a lot to drink, lay down on the sofa and fell asleep, the court heard. The group eventually moved into another room but a business associate of Bish’s, Mark Rowe, fell asleep on the second sofa in the same room. Heather Norton, prosecuting, told jurors that when the woman had fallen asleep she had been uncovered - a detail confirmed by Rowe - but when she woke up she had been covered with a quilt and Boateng was on top of her sexually assaulting her. Her underwear had been pulled down, Norton said, and as she was disorientated she initially thought it was her boyfriend. When she realized what was happening, she pushed him off, shouted who the hell are you? and ran sobbing into the next room, jurors heard. In her video interview with police the woman, who is now 23, said that she was sick four times the next day and was only persuaded to go to police after phoning her mother.