Husband in slander case 'went to brothels': Jury told about 'salacious' club

THE JURY in the 'Fatal Attraction' slander action was told yesterday by a private investigator that clubs in the Netherlands visited by the man at the centre of the case were undoubtedly brothels.

David Wraith, 48, a former chairman of Scunthorpe United Football Club, has told the High Court that the clubs were high-class establishments where he enjoyed a drink and a game of roulette, but never had sex. He is suing his ex-wife Shirley for damages, accusing her of waging a 'ferocious campaign of spiteful vengeance' in which she told others he had given her VD, allegedly contracted on his Dutch business trips.

Yesterday, Michael Cornwall, an inquiry agent with Albany Investigations, of Chesterfield, Derbyshire, said that earlier this year he visited, with a colleague, two clubs, near Amsterdam, called Chatterley's and Boccaccio. The colleague hid a wide-angle video lens behind the press-stud of his anorak.

A video showing a man and a woman engaged in a sex act was playing at Chatterley's and the room was full of 'scantily-clad' females, he said. They were approached by two women, Suzy and Chantelle, who asked them to go upstairs and have sex - or offered, for pounds 540, to return to their hotel for two hours.

'There were no eating facilities and no gaming facilities. It was simply a brothel . . . I consider myself very lucky getting out of there with my trousers on,' Mr Cornwall said. Boccaccio's was a 'salacious, luxurious' club with an assortment of women dressed in low tops and short skirts.

There was laughter from the jury when he said: 'We had a problem with the video camera overheating at that moment. I thought we were going to have to make a quick exit,' he said.

On a guided tour, they were shown rooms with mirrored ceilings and condoms by the bedside, and a swimming pool where a nude woman was fondling a naked man.

Mr Wraith, of Bellwood Grange Farm, Brampton, Lincolnshire, accuses his wife of 22 years of telling friends and colleagues that he was guilty of 'insider' share dealing and stealing proceeds of the sale of their Majorcan property and her Porsche.

Mrs Wraith, 48, who runs the Fair View hotel in Hawes, Wensleydale, North Yorkshire, claims her VD allegations were true and denies ever making the allegations of dishonesty. Earlier, she said a doctor told her that her ex-husband - to whom she had always been faithful - must have been the source of a sexual infection she caught.

The case continues today when the jury will see Mr Cornwall's video tape.