A WOMAN told a jury a Worcester nightclub boss ‘turned into a monster’, leaving her ‘frightened to death’ – but the court also heard that she wanted to retract her police statement in July last year.

The complainant, now 44, gave evidence against Bushwackers boss Darren Pinches from behind a screen at Warwick Crown Court yesterday after comparing him to serial killer Hannibal Lecter.

Pinches, 52, of Bromyard Road, Worcester, denies administering cocaine with intent to stupefy or overpower a woman to enable him to engage in sexual activity with her and a sexual assault in a Bushwackers storeroom on New Year’s Day last year.

He also denies possession of cocaine at his then home in Berkley Gardens, Fernhill Heath on January 13 last year, supplying cocaine to a second woman between February 9 and 15, 2016 and offering to supply cocaine to a third between September 3 and 5, 2015.

The witness was cross-examined by Pinches’ barrister, Michael Burrows QC, about the incident which she says happened at Browns at the Quay in Worcester on September 11, 2015.

She accepted that Pinches behaviour on the night was ‘out of character’ and ‘at odds with anything that had gone before’. Previously they had ‘never had a crossed word’ and Pinches was ‘always polite’.

She was asked about why she had told police in interview that the incident took place on September 4, 2015. She apologised for ‘getting the wrong date’ but said it had been ‘an extremely stressful time’ and she had been ‘very, very frightened’.

As previously reported, the complainant had been at Browns with friends when Pinches bought her complimentary wine which she gave to a friend. Afterwards she drove to the wine bar Bottles in the city centre to meet the same group of friends who had left earlier in a taxi.

The woman says a manager from Browns arrived at Bottles ‘requesting’ that she return to Browns because Pinches wanted to speak to her urgently. She returned later that evening, believing it must have been very important, and claimed Pinches then offered her cocaine in an upstairs room, an offer she declined.

The woman said the same manager who had approached her in Bottles told her a taxi was ready for her even though she had not ordered one and that Pinches told the man he should knock before entering. When the man left she said Pinches swept the glasses off the table and told her to take her trousers off.

However, she left the room, telling Pinches she needed the toilet. From there she said she texted her boyfriend asking for help although she confirmed she had since deleted these messages. The woman told the court she was afraid Pinches would follow her inside and ‘there would be no way of escaping’.

The complainant told the jury: “He scared me. He turned into a monster.” She said Pinches’s demands for sex were ‘not a proposition’ but ‘a threat’.

“I was frightened for my life. All I wanted was to do was get out of there safely,” she said.

She said the same manager who claimed her taxi had arrived urged her, while out of sight of Pinches, to leave by the stairs.

When she did so she told the jury she locked herself in a car but in subsequent telephone calls could not speak properly because she believed her drink had been spiked.

Pinches frowned and shook his head in the dock as she said this.

She was asked why her mobile phone had been used to call the landline at Browns at 11.30pm. The woman said Pinches had borrowed it to call downstairs to have his own mobile phone brought upstairs by a man she described as looking like a ‘Peaky Blinder’.

Afterwards she said he used his phone to make up the lines of cocaine which he snorted. She said if that man had brought Pinches the cocaine she never saw it being handed over.

The witness said: “I have never ever set foot in any of his properties again - never would and that’s how it is. I told them (her friends) what happened that night. I said ‘don’t ask me to go to Browns or the Quay or Bushwackers or Sin ever again’.”

The woman acknowledged she had wanted to retract her statement against Pinches on July 10 last year because she was ‘sick to death’.

“I don’t go into Worcester anymore. I feel threatened. I even put my house on the market because I wanted to get out of the area,” she said.

The trial continues.