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BUDDHA: British politician loses bizarre libel case



>From: C-reuters@clari.net (Reuter / David Ljunggren)
>Subject: British politician loses bizarre libel case
>Organization: Copyright 1995 by Reuters
>Date: Tue, 19 Dec 1995 9:40:02 PST
>Slugword: BRITAIN-LIBEL

  	  	
	 LONDON (Reuter) - A parliamentarian of Britain's ruling 
Conservatives Tuesday lost a libel case over a newspaper's 
allegations that he was a homosexual and a hypocrite.  
	 The verdict came at the end of a bizarre legal case that 
laid bare the private life of what sections of the media dubbed 
the ``family from hell.''  
	 David Ashby, a member of parliament for the ruling 
Conservative party, burst into tears after the verdict and 
pushed away his estranged Italian-born wife Silvana, who had 
provided much of the evidence to back claims by The Sunday Times 
that he was a homosexual, a liar and a hypocrite.  
	 The 55-year-old MP sued the newspaper over a January 1994 
story which said he had shared a double bed with a man friend on 
holiday. The paper also said he was having an affair with male 
doctor Ciaran Kilduff. Ashby denied he was a homosexual.  
	 The case could provide fresh ammunition for critics of Prime 
Minister John Major's government, which has been dogged by a 
series of sleaze allegations involving sexual and financial 
indiscretions by senior members of the Conservative party.  
	 In February 1994 Conservative MP Stephen Milligan was found 
dead in a London apartment clad only in women's stockings with a 
plastic bag tied over his head and cable wound round his neck.  
	 Ashby, who faces a legal bill estimated to be around 
$750,000 to cover the cost of the four-week trial, admitted to 
the court he had shared a bed with other male MPs more than once 
but said he had only done so to save money.  
	 Referring to one MP with whom he had shared a room in the 
past, Ashby said: ``He complained because I snored.''  
	 The Sunday Times said Ashby -- a member of parliament for 12 
years -- was a hypocrite for circulating a leaflet in the run-up 
to the 1992 general election saying he understood the needs of 
families.  
	 No one could claim that the picture of the Ashbys which 
emerged during the trial was that of a normal family.  
	 Ashby professed he still loved his wife but said she was 
obsessed by the idea he might be homosexual, once shouting 
``poofters, poofters'' through the letter box of Kilduff's 
apartment when both men were inside.  
	 On another occasion, he said she had burst into the house of 
an elderly male friend and had thrown plates and knives at both 
men while accusing them of sleeping together.  
	 Silvana admitted she told her husband: ``My God, David, you 
make me sick. First of all, you are going for young boys. Now 
you are going for old and crippled men.''  
	 The couple's daughter Alexandra told the court that Silvana 
had accused her of being a lesbian after she had shared a 
changing booth with a girl on an Italian beach when aged 16.  
	 ``I want to make it clear that I am not ``obsessively 
jealous' and have never shown ``extreme hatred or violence' 
toward David or anyone else,'' Silvana, 52, told reporters 
outside court.  
	 ``I love my husband very much and will always be behind 
him.''  
	 Ashby told the court he had quarrelled with his wife every 
day for the last six years and said she had often attacked him.  
	 She claimed he had once tried to stab her to death and also 
said that when she complained she was lonely in her marriage he 
bought her a dog.  
	 At one point during the proceedings Ashby donned a grotesque 
mask with a hosepipe attached, which he said he usually wore to 
help him get to sleep.  
	 He claimed the unwieldiness of the contraption ruled out any 
homosexual acts while sharing a bed with other men.
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