Lord Anthony Lester, a human rights barrister and former government adviser who has been a peer since 1993, will be suspended until June 2022 after a committee found that he tried to pressure Jasvinder Sanghera into sleeping with him and threatening her with repercussions if she refused.
Ms Sanghera, founder of an award winning charity was contacted by Lord Lester of Hern Hill to formulate laws over forced marriages and categorize them as a civil offence. In the process of draft meetings when one evening she had missed her train the peer offered her to stay over at his house assuring her that his wife would be present.
But the next morning after his wife left for work, he physically harassed her until she eventually evaded. However, later he continued to proposition her going to the extent of telling her that he would “make her a baroness within a year if she slept with him!” implicitly threatening that repercussions would follow on her refusal.
That was the time when she looked back at how she campaigns for women empowerment by opposing forced marriages and ultimately decided to break her silence.
