A serving police officer accused of raping a woman in the sea during his stag do has told a jury he was “peer-pressured” into going in the water with her.

Met sergeant Laurence Knight, 34, allegedly attacked a stranger off Brighton beach in the early hours of July 17, 2021.

She is said to have told him “you’re getting married in two weeks”, a jury at Southwark Crown Court has heard.

Prosecutors say once they were in the water, he moved her underwear before raping her.

The alleged victim asked him “what are you doing” and said “stop” and he did not reply, she said in her police interview.

“I said you’re getting married in two weeks, just stop, don’t do that, and he just didn’t stop,” the prosecution said reading from the woman’s police interview on Monday.

In his evidence to the jury on Friday June 23, Mr Knight claimed she first touched his penis.

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He says he then touched her vagina for a few seconds, thinking it was consensual, before she made the comment about his imminent wedding and they returned to the shore. He denies he had any intention to penetrate her vagina.

Jurors were told he had drunk heavily and his group had been visited by strippers before they met the alleged victim and a male friend.

Prosecutor Maryam Syed asked him: “If this was another guy’s girl, why did you go into the sea with her?”

He replied: “Quite honestly, I quite enjoyed having the attention. It was a very spur of the moment request from her, it was not discussed before.

“Having had some alcohol and being the stag and being the one that everything was deflected towards, I suppose the phrase is peer pressure.”

The prosecutor said: “You are a police officer. You understand the issues of dealing with people who might be in drink and vulnerable, particularly young women.”

He replied: “Everybody.”

She responded: “Particularly young women.”

He replied: “Yes.”

The prosecutor asked: “How was your judgment?”

He replied: “Clearly not very good.”

The prosecutor suggested he went into the sea with her so he could “get her alone”, but he said other people were watching them on the shore.

The court heard he sent her a Facebook message on July 21 that year saying “you are not (the woman) that went for a dip in the sea on Friday whilst her guy friend looked after her bag?”

The defendant, who worked for a charity and as a teacher before joining the police, told jurors he had sent the message “to acknowledge I was embarrassed, she was younger, perhaps less mature and she was the one that stepped in and stopped it going any further”.

He said he later deleted the message because he became worried his fiancee would see it.

He also told jurors his “initial reaction” to his arrest was believing he was being subjected to “an extended prank from the stag do”.

Knight, from Leyton in east London, who the Met said has been suspended from duty, denies rape and sexual assault.

The trial continues.