Essex CSI 'pulled down crime victim's leggings'

Kevin Dowley, 62, worked as a crime scene investigator at the time of the alleged incidents

A forensic investigator pulled down a domestic violence victim's leggings without permission and ordered her to remove her top, a court has heard.

Kevin Dowley, 62, is accused of sexually assaulting the woman, who was pregnant at the time, at Grays Police station in Essex.

Giving evidence at Basildon Crown Court, she broke down in tears as she told jurors she felt "dirty".

Mr Dowley, 62, of Burgess Avenue in Stanford-le-Hope, denies two charges.

At the second day of his trial, the crime scene investigator's accuser told jurors the assault happened while he was measuring her injuries in a photographic studio at the police station.

He had told her to take her top off so he could see her bruises properly, she said.

"His hands started shaking when he had the ruler and when he was touching my skin," she said.

"He wasn't shaking when we went down to the room."

The woman, who gave evidence from behind a screen, said crime scene investigator Mr Dowley had taken pictures of her with her top off but she had never found out what happened to those images as they had not appeared in evidence.

"I knew he was still taking pictures because the flash on his camera was still going off," she said.

"At the end he said there was a problem with the card. I got told they were lost."

Mr Dowley is also accused of a sex attack on another woman, which he also denies.

The trial continues.