A WOMAN was allegedly groped in a Lake District hotel hot tub on Valentine’s Day.

Paul Anthony Hardy, 31, is on trial at Carlisle Crown Court. He denies sexually assaulting the female.

Jurors heard the woman visited a Windermere hotel with her boyfriend on February 13 last year.

Hardy was there with his partner. The couples, who had never met before, spent much of the day in each other’s company and dined together.

Hardy and his partner then invited the other couple back to their room, where they changed into swimming costumes, got into a hot tub and “continued to laugh, drink and sing” into the early hours.

In a police interview played to jurors, the woman alleged the man had stroked her leg before touching her sexually.

“I tried to push his hand off under the water but he’s quite strong so he kept pushing against mine,” she told an officer.

“I didn’t flirt with him or anything,” she said, describing feeling “frozen” and “dirty”. “I don’t understand how I could have given him any impression that I wanted him to do that to me.

“I just think it’s disgusting how he thinks that I could’ve given him the wrong impression. I didn’t give him any impression whatsoever.”

The woman’s partner told jurors she‘d whispered to him that Hardy had carried out a sexual act. The couple “pretty quickly” said goodbye and returned to their room.

The man returned to speak with Hardy. “We spoke in the corridor outside the door,” he said in evidence. “I told him that she had told me he had touched her, and he just apologised straight away and said that he got the wrong idea.”

But when interviewed Hardy, of Ashbrooke Estate, Shotton Colliery, near Peterlee, told police he believed the woman had consented.

Opening the case to jurors, prosecutor Jon Close said: “He maintains those denials. He maintains that the complainant did consent to his actions.

“Further, he states that he reasonably believed that she consented. The crown say no, she did not consent.” The trial continues.