Thread by @jamesdoleman

Court rises as the presiding judge Lady Dorrian enters and day 2 begins.
Alex Salmond is in the dock, flanked by two court security staff.

The jury of 9 women and 6 men take their seats, and Alec Prentice QC, for the Crown, resumes his examination in chief of "Witness H," a former Scottish Government official

Prentice moves on to the day after the alleged attack and asks the witness if she attended a scheduled football event the next day, she says she did not "I felt sick, I wanted to throw up I didn't want to see him [Salmond]

Witness says she emailed the First Minister's private office to say she was not attending,

The court is now being shown the email in question
It says she was not attending as "my arm is killing me," adding "last night's dinner went well, send my apologies to FM."

Asked if her arm was painful replies,"yes because I spent the night before trying to block the First Minister on the bed,"
Says she did not mention the alleged attack as she was "in shock, it took me ages to process it."

Says she then got a telephone call from Alex Salmond, who she says was "quite perky," and did not discuss what had happened the night before, he just encouraged her to come to the football event.

Witness tells the court she was still "in trauma from the night before," and refused.

Prentice asks if the witness reported the events to anyone, she says not, in full, until 2018 when she spoke to the Police. "I was trying to make sense of what had happened, it may have been a drunken mistake, he went off the rails under the pressure of the campaign,"

Says she did become distressed on holiday in 2017 and did tell someone close to her (who we can't name) that she was thinking of reporting the alleged incident to party headquarters.

Witness says she "wanted to feel secure," before reporting anything, "The First Minister is a very powerful man and I didn't want to get on the wrong side of him."

Says that the Me too movement, and the discussion of the Harvey Weinstein case "began to give me flashbacks,"

She then decided to contact a member of Staff at SNP headquarters who dealt with "governess issues,"

*governance*

Prentice now showing the court evidence of text messages and call records between the witness to an SNP staff member in January 2019,

Now shows the witness an instant message she sent to another SNP staffer from 2017 asking if there was a confidential process she could use to report an issue with sexual misconduct
He replies there is, and says they can meet or she can talk to a solicitor

The witness then replied, I obviously trust you and happy to speak to you rather than use a lawers time,"

Witness says she was speaking to the staffer, Mr Ian McCann in the "context of MeToo and what happened to me,"

Says "I was driven by the fact that I didn't want anyone else working for him to have to happen to them what happened to me," also want it to be on his file when his fitness for office was being considered,"
Says didn't make a formal complaint because "I was scared."

Witness says that she didn't take any steps to formally report the issue until the summer of 2018, says "I was finding it difficult to even talk about it,"

Says she then spoke, by telephone, to a solicitor working for the SNP to make an anonymous complaint.

Court now hearing various messages from August 2018 between Neil McCann and the witness where they discuss a story about Salmond that had appeared in the press. Agrees they later met for a coffee

Says she did not go into details about what had allegedly happened but told him that an incident with Mr Salmond had taken place,
Crown ends their examination