London: The daughter of a former British Cabinet minister, who escaped a sex attack here recently, has launched a campaign to warn women against unlicensed taxi drivers in London.
Lydia Huhne, daughter of former energy minister Chris Huhne in Prime Minister David Cameron`s Cabinet, has spoken out about how she headbutted a mini-cab driver who tried to rape her on a night out in London over the weekend.
She was attacked by a cab driver described as "stocky Afro-Caribbean" who locked the car doors, climbed into the back and touched her face and breast.
"I just saw red and headbutted him in the middle of the face. He sort of recoiled and then I yelled he better let me out of the car because I had a Stanley knife and would be forced to use it," she told reporters here.
"He started to laugh and opened the doors and I just ran out. If it wasn`t for me having done fight scenes I wouldn`t have ever thought about headbutting," she added.
The theatre artist, who works for Burnt Out Theatre, said she wanted to turn the experience into something more positive after the negative publicity her parents had attracted after being jailed for eight months last year for a driving offence.
She said: "That`s the first time I had ever used a non-licensed cab. However close you are to home, however safe you feel, you must never get in those cars. They are just touters. I feel quite lucky that nothing really serious happened, I`m pretty shaken up by the whole event."
Scotland Yard is now investigating the incident which took place in south London in the early hours of Sunday.
"The incident is being investigated by the sexual offences team based within the Metropolitan Police Service Safer Transport Command," a spokesperson said.
