I felt enormous guilt, says ex-MP in honeytrap scandal

Warning: This story contains references to suicide

It was 4am one morning in April and William Wragg was at home in his cottage on the edge of the Peak District, unable to sleep.

"I really was having very dark thoughts," he tells me in his first broadcast interview about his involvement in Parliament’s "honeytrap" scandal.

At the time, Wragg was a Conservative MP and a few days earlier he had admitted to a journalist that he had shared the phone numbers of fellow politicians with someone he had met on a dating app.

Since the story was published, photographers had been camping outside his parents’ home.

"I drove around to my parents’ house and said to them: ‘I need to go to hospital'," he recalls.

That night his mother took him to the local accident and emergency unit. He was stooping as he leant on the front desk. "Have you got a bad back?" the receptionist asked cheerily. "No," he replied. "I'm suicidal."

Wragg had been one of dozens of victims of an individual who adopted the identities of ‘Charlie’ and ‘Abi’ and sent flirtatious texts to politicians, journalists and advisers.

Unlike others who had received messages unsolicited, he had been the one to initiate contact with ‘Charlie’ on the gay dating app Grindr.

"I was quite lonely to be honest," Wragg says. "It was an evening at the end of January. I was back at my flat in London following a day at Westminster, and I was just on my blank online profile. And I saw his profile and messaged to say hello."

‘Charlie’ seemed to know a lot about the world of UK politics and soon the conversation moved to WhatsApp. Wragg thought this might be the start of a relationship.

"I was actually very flattered because he was an attractive guy," Wragg says. "And he had a manner in the conversation that was assertive, but slightly cocky. That's an attractive quality too."

Within hours the men had exchanged naked photos.

"Was that wise?" I ask.

"Obviously it wasn't," Wragg replies. “But when you're in the moment it wasn't a consideration. I know that might sound ridiculous, people think how stupid can you be? But we're all human. We all have those desires. I'm as fallible as the next person."

The pair spoke on the phone two or three times but when they arranged a date at a pub near Parliament, Wragg was stood up.

"It didn't materialise obviously, because as it transpired he wasn't real. But I didn't know that at the time," he says.

“And I didn't hear from him until the next day. He was incredibly apologetic. I thought OK, he’s just had a bad day at work."

The nature of this apparently fledgling romantic relationship soon took a darker turn when ‘Charlie’ asked Wragg to send him the phone numbers of other men who worked in Parliament.

"He said ‘you've got two minutes to send me these numbers’. And that's when it, as far as I was concerned, turned a bit weird.”

Was he being blackmailed?

"I don't know," he says. "There was never anything that was explicit to say that, but I certainly felt a threat."

Wragg also concedes that amidst the intoxication of possible romance he felt "a sense of wanting to please" ‘Charlie’. He ended up handing over around a dozen phone numbers, including for a number of MPs.

At the time, then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said Wragg was right to apologise, while minister Mel Stride called his actions "exceptionally inappropriate and ill-advised".

I point out his actions made the situation worse, resulting in others also becoming victims.

"Yeah and that is why I felt guilt," he replies. "That's why I felt so, so sorry and shameful."

‘Charlie’ also told a few of the men he messaged in Westminster that he was a former researcher for Wragg. He asked the MP to lie and say this was true. Wragg agreed.

"That is what I feel the most regret for," he tells me. "Because it’s deceitful."

Wragg started to have panic attacks. "I remember one evening getting back to my flat in London, waking my flatmates up because I was just in a complete state," he says.

"I was shouting, crying, swearing, had this anger, and I didn't know why. They were concerned but I couldn't explain to them what it was."

Seven months on from the height of the scandal, Wragg has left the world of Westminster behind. He is much happier, he says, but still talks of the "shame" he feels and the "havoc" the catfisher wrought.

"I have no bitterness or anger left in me," he says, when I ask how he feels about the catfisher. "Because I felt so wretched and awful in myself."

He believes they were motivated by sexual kicks and by the power they held over others.

"My only wish for them is not to do it any more," he says. "And to understand that impersonating or pretending to be somebody… it's not victimless. It is very real and its psychological impact is particularly strong."

Wragg hopes by speaking out he may help others to spot the signs of catfishing, and report it. ActionFraud has received almost 7,500 reports of dating scams so far this year.

"It’s a source of great shame that my time in Parliament ended in this way," he says.

On his final day as an MP, Wragg had a consultation with a psychologist, which he jokes is "a fitting summation" of his nine years in the Commons.

"They have two mental health beds available at any one time for members of Parliament. And it's surprising how often they're occupied."

The trauma of recent months has undoubtedly damaged his interest in dating. Does he think he’ll find love? "I hope so, yes," he says. "But I'm being a bit more guarded at the moment."