Khan, who served as the Conservative MP for Wakefield from 2019 until his resignation in April, was sentenced to 18 months in prison in May after being found guilty of assaulting a 15-year-old boy at a house in 2008. He had denied the charge. Last month, the 49-year-old appealed his conviction to the Court of Appeal. The appeal was denied on Monday, with judge Michael Sweeney saying he had “no doubt” Khan’s trial was fair and his conviction was secure. During the original trial, the jury heard Khan forcing the then-teenager to drink gin and tonic before dragging him upstairs, pushing him onto a bed, and asking him to watch pornography before the attack. The victim, now 29, testified in Southwark Crown Court that Khan touched his feet and legs and came within “a hair’s breadth” of his privates while attempting to sleep in a top bunk bed. He fled to his parents, and a police report was filed at the time, but no further action was taken because he refused to file a formal complaint. But, when Khan ran as a Conservative in the December 2019 general election, he told the court, “it all came flooding back.” When he made the allegation to the Conservative Party press office days before Khan was elected as MP for Wakefield, he said he was not “taken very seriously. He filed a police report just days after Khan helped the party retain power by defeating Labour with a majority of over 3,000 votes. “The only regret you feel is towards yourself for having found yourself in the predicament you face as a result of your actions some 14 years ago,” Mr Justice Jeremy Baker said in passing sentence in May. Khan, the judge said, had shown a “significant degree of brutality” in the lead-up to the assault, when he dragged his victim upstairs and threw him on a bed in a Staffordshire house in January 2008.
