Man in Black 'rape victim' took hard drugs, says ex

A WOMAN who claims she was forced to take crack cocaine and was subjected to repeated sex attacks by a millionaire businessman regularly took hard drugs, according to her ex-boyfriend. The accusations were vigorously denied in the High Court by Mandy Lawson, who claimed her ex-lover, Mykal Pinder, of Brixton Hill, south London, had been paid to lie.

Miss Lawson is suing the estate of 'Man in Black' Christopher Dawes for what she claims was a life-destroying ordeal of rape and enforced hard-drug taking in Alderney over the Christmas period in 1998.

Mr Dawes, who made his fortune from his Micromuse computer empire, died at the wheel of his McLaren F1 when he crashed the sports car in March 1999.

Miss Lawson is claiming a six-figure sum and says she is still suffering from those days of hell.

Sobbing as barristers recalled the details of the alleged rapes, Miss Lawson said Mr Dawes had put a crack pipe into her mouth. She inhaled through fear of how he might react if she refused.

He then repeatedly raped her on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day and warned her that any attempt at escape would be useless as he employed ex-SAS guards and there were cameras in every room and bugs on the phones.

Miss Lawson, who said she was lured to the island on the pretence of a job interview, finally plucked up the courage to call her boyfriend and police in the island were contacted.

That day, police searched Mr Dawes' properties and found a four-gram lump of crack cocaine. They took away bedding and the millionaire was arrested the following day.

He was later charged with possessing and supplying cocaine but never faced charges on the rape allegations.

Miss Lawson claims her alleged ordeal had plunged her into 'anxiety and neurosis' and 'quite unable to fulfil her ambitions'.

But lawyers for Mr Dawes' estate yesterday suggested that Miss Lawson had been a regular user of hard drugs before she went to Alderney and drew on a witness statement provided to the court by her ex-boyfriend, Mr Pinder.

Miss Lawson did admit that she regularly used cannabis, but vigorously denied being a regular cocaine user.

When asked by John Kelsey-Fry, QC, for Mr Dawes' estate, why Mr Pinder would have said what he did, Miss Lawson told the court: 'I believe he has been paid.'

However, Miss Lawson admitted she had told police that she had never taken hard drugs, 'remembering' only earlier this year that she had taken Ecstasy three times with her ex-boyfriend who, she said, had a long history of taking the drug.

Miss Lawson, of Fountain Road, Thornton Heath, Surrey, flatly denied suggestions by Mr Kelsey-Fry that she was 'prone to exaggeration' and that she had wrongly told a counsellor that she had been raped at the age of 16.

However, she did admit that she had been a frequent visitor to fetish clubs with her ex-partner.

She explained: 'I wanted to do a lot of creative hairdressing. I also went there for fun and to dance.

'There were a lot of people there, make-up artists, models - people I thought I could work with in the future.'

But she added that the ordeal she underwent at the hands of Mr Dawes had ruined any dreams of making a success of her South Norwood salon.

She told the court: 'I don't feel able to put myself out in the public domain.'

Miss Lawson also denied suggestions by Mr Kelsey-Fry that diary entries implied she had been able to carry on her life much as before, claiming she 'still felt very worried and vulnerable'.

The case continues.

The hearing, which is scheduled to last a week, continues.