A young Scottish Prison Service worker has told how she felt “sick” after a colleague offered to remove a breakfast dribble from her face – and then kissed her on the lips.
Allan Munro “scooted” towards the woman on his cookhouse chair, making “a weird kissing noise” and “slurping like a cat drinking milk”, Alloa Sheriff Court was told.
He then allegedly sexually assaulted the 23-year-old at HMP Glenochil prison Clackmannanshire by kissing her top lip.
The woman said the incident happened as she had been eating her breakfast in a small office fitted with glass so staff could monitor the 15 to 20 prisoners working in the kitchen preparing meals.
Munro, 56, and two other prison officers were also in the office.
Giving evidence from behind a screen, the woman told the court: “Alan was about a chair-and-a-half’s length away from me.
“I was eating muesli and he said, ‘You’ve got milk on your lip, do you want me to get it?’”
The woman said she said no but Munro “lifted both feet and scooted towards her” on his chair. She said: “I shut my eyes and scrunched my face up and went mm-mm [negative non-verbal speech sound].
“He made a weird kissing noise and came face-to-face and touched me on the top lip.
“I felt his moustache.”
She said she been shaking her head, had tried to move her head back and away, and had opened her eyes just before Munro’s moustache and top lip was in contact with her top lip, at the left hand corner of her mouth.
She said: “I felt horrible. I felt sick.”
Prosecutor Rachel Wallace asked: “Do you think you made it clear you didn’t want this to happen?” The woman replied: “Very clear.”
She said Munro, a relief officer, later apologised to her, saying, “I’m sorry, I took that too far, I shouldn’t have done that” but she was left “embarrassed and angry”.
She said: “The trust had been completely broken, professionally and personally. I still feel horrible.”
In answer to cross-examination, she told Munro’s lawyer Jennifer Bain that Munro had “sounded like a cat drinking milk”.
Ms Bain suggested that the noise Munro had made was “as if slurping”.
The woman replied: “Yes”. She said the noise Munro had made was “funny, but not funny ha-ha – it was a strange noise”.
She told the court that she reported Munro and he afterwards left his job, and no longer works at the prison.
Bain said Munro’s position was that he had “immediately recoiled” and had said he hadn’t mean to touch the woman in the incident, which is alleged to have occurred on March 5, 2020.
Munro, of Tillicoultry, Clackmannanshire, denies a charge of sexually assaulting the woman by kissing her on the mouth.
The Crown case continues, and the summary trial, before Sheriff Craig Harris, was adjourned until June 30.
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