Thomas Haley: Pilot kicked out of airforce after groping colleague

An RAF officer who squeezed the bottom of a young female colleague on a night out has been dismissed from the forces.

Flight Lieutenant Thomas Haley had been celebrating a win with his military football team when he groped the servicewoman on her first visit to a nightclub.

The senior airman was found guilty of sexual assault at an earlier court martial hearing. Now he has been handed a suspended four-month jail sentence and ordered to pay the victim £1,000 compensation as well as being kicked out of the RAF.

Prosecutor Lieutenant Colonel Chris Adair told Bulford Military Court in Wiltshire that Haley ‘looked squarely at [the servicewoman’s] bottom before extending his arm in that direction and her bottom and grabbing it’.

It was claimed the action was ‘quick’ and there was a sexual element to it before the woman – who did not know the officer – confronted Haley.

The airman denied the offence at Popworld in Reading, Berkshire, last year but the prosecution claimed video footage showed that it was ‘crystal clear that this is no accident’. Lt Col Adair added that it was ‘a sexual assault against a young woman he had just met that evening – a sexual assault that this defendant has not accepted responsibility for’.

The victim told police: ‘I was just minding my own business and didn’t even know he was behind me.

‘There were no words, just a hand gesture.’

Haley, who was based at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, must also complete up to 30 rehabilitation activity days plus 150 hours of unpaid work.