(MENAFN- Gulf Times) Theresa May is under pressure to explain whether she knew about allegations of 'extreme bullying against the disgraced former minister Andrew Griffiths when she promoted him to government within days of becoming prime minister.
Griffiths, the prime minister's former chief of staff who was forced to resign as a minister for sending hundreds of sexually explicit messages to two women, had been accused of bullying a council leader for several years when May took office in July 2016.
The complaints, which can be revealed for the first time, are understood to include claims that the Tory MP sent abusive text messages to Richard Grosvenor, the leader of the Tory-run East Staffordshire borough council.
Despite the complaint being acknowledged by Conservative campaign headquarters (CCHQ) in e-mails up to January 2016, Grosvenor said his allegations were never properly investigated.
Six months later, in July 2016, Griffiths was appointed lord commissioner of the Treasury and senior government whip in May's first government.
The new revelation will raise further questions about his rapid rise to government and increase pressure on him to resign as the MP for Burton.
More than 5,000 people have signed a petition calling for him to step down and a demonstration is planned in his constituency next month. Many in his own party have refused to publicly back him as concerns about his past conduct have become public this week.
The 47-year-old stood down as minister for small business last weekend after it emerged he had sent more than 2,000 texts, many of them sexually aggressive, to two bar workers more than 20 years his junior.
The Guardian revealed this week that Griffiths was promoted to minister for small business in January despite being under investigation over allegations of inappropriate touching and bullying by Deneice Florence-Jukes, a former Tory borough councillor, who had filed a formal complaint three months earlier.
It is understood that the complaints by Grosvenor, who has led the Conservatives on East Staffordshire borough council since May 2009, date back to at least 2015 before Griffiths was promoted to government.
Grosvenor said he had been the victim of 'extreme bullying by Griffiths over many years but that his complaints to CCHQ had fallen on deaf ears.
The council leader has told friends that he received 'ranting texts from Griffiths, including some threatening to overthrow him and expel him from the party.
Grosvenor confided in Florence-Jukes about his ordeal last year when she approached him 'in floods of tears about her experience of Griffiths, according to her formal complaint to CCHQ.
Florence-Jukes, a former military police officer who now sits as an independent councillor, complained she had been bullied and 'inappropriately touched by Griffiths.
Her complaint was dismissed in February a month after Griffiths' ministerial appointment after the MP claimed it was 'implausible that he would touch a female colleague's knee in a room full of people. He admitted putting his arm around her waist, but said he had no other option because she was tall and her husband was holding her back.
It can now be disclosed that Florence-Jukes also told the Conservative party about 'alarming rumours of alleged sexual indiscretions by Griffiths which, she said, were circulating among members of the East Staffordshire Conservative association. But Griffiths described the rumours as 'completely fictitious and defamatory and they were dismissed as appearing to be 'founded entirely on hearsay rumour and gossip and were not investigated further.
Her 11-page complaint, seen by the Guardian, described Griffiths as a 'savage bully who ostracised her from the party after she 'embarrassed the MP by turning down an offer to run for a seat in last year's snap election. He had supported her candidacy and raised money for her campaign before she withdrew from the race.
The complaint sent in November describes how Griffiths ran his Burton-based party headquarters Gothard House, known as No 9, as his personal fiefdom. The MP surrounded himself with young, male, aspiring MPs labelled 'Chairman Mao's gang of four who, the councillor said, allowed his unreasonable behaviour to go unchallenged.
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