Huhne girl f ights off sex attack by driver in a mini-cab
THE daughter of Chris Huhne headbutted an unlicensed taxi driver and escaped after he tried to sexually assault her.
Actress Lydia Huhne, 24, was terrified when the man locked the car doors, climbed into the back and began touching her.
But she managed to fight him off and screamed at him that she had a knife until he let her out of the car. She said she was left ‘retching from shock’ afterwards.
A bouncer had hailed the car for Miss Huhne as she left a nightclub in the early hours of Sunday morning in Clapham, south London, close to her home.
But a short distance from the venue, the driver stopped the car and locked the doors.
Miss Huhne, who jointly runs a theatre company, said: ‘He clambered into the back – bounded, really. He started touching my face, which was most scary, then my boob.
‘I just saw red and headbutted him in the middle of the face.
‘He sort of recoiled, and then I yelled he better let me out of the car because I had a Stanley knife and would be forced to use it. I don’t know where that came from.
‘He started to laugh and opened the doors and I just ran out.
‘I feel quite lucky that nothing really serious happened, I’m pretty shaken up by the whole event.’ When she got home to her boyfriend she was violently sick.
Miss Huhne’s parents, former cabinet minister Huhne, 59, and his ex-wife Vicky Pryce, 61, received eight-month jail terms for perverting the course of justice following
‘You must never get in those cars’
the speeding points scandal that destroyed her father’s career. They were convicted after Pryce, a former government economics adviser, revealed she had accepted speeding points on the former Energy Secretary’s behalf. Both were released after serving just eight weeks in jail.
Upon Pryce’s release, she wrote a memoir called Prisonomics, but was criticised for not including ‘a single paragraph of regret, remorse or repentance’.
Huhne also seemed unrepentant, claiming he was prosecuted to provide a ‘deterrent effect’ to others.
Their daughter, who trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, said she had chosen to speak out to raise awareness of the dangers of taking unlicensed taxis.
Miss Huhne said: ‘There has been so much publicity around my family and it’s been negative, so I wanted to use this horrible experience to raise awareness and turn it into something positive.’
She has now called f or selfdefence classes for children.
She said: ‘I really do think it’s i mportant that self- defence is taught in schools. If it wasn’t for me having done fight scenes in plays, I wouldn’t have thought about headbutting.
‘ Luckily nothing really happened because I reacted fast.
‘ If another person had got i n the car and hadn’t had training it could have resulted in something much more dire.
‘It was very scary. It’s really sad in this day and age, but girls should not go home on their own. That’s the first time I had ever used a nonlicensed cab. However close you are to home, however safe you feel, you must never get in those cars. They are just touters.
‘Even if you are put in the taxi by someone you trust and even if you have a very short journey, only get in registered cabs or black cabs.’
The taxi driver was described as a stocky black man.
The Metropolitan Police said it is investigating an allegation of ‘sexual assault by touching’ on Sunday, February 9.
There were 71 sexual offences committed in taxis between April and November last year.