The constituent wrote to Clegg in March 2011 but did not even receive an acknowledgement. It has taken her two years of battling, with the support of a human rights lawyer, to force the Lib Dem party at national and local level to investigate the complaints against Hancock. He has not been suspended from his roles as MP or city councillor, despite calls from both Labour and Tory politicians in Portsmouth. 

The constituent says that the party's previous failure to deal with the allegations into Hancock left her devastated and depressed. "I feel let down by Clegg and the others in the party that have refused to investigate Hancock's actions for so long. My mental health has suffered and I feel a great deal of stress and anger towards these people."

Hancock's fellow Portsmouth Lib Dem city councillor David Fuller was recently found to have been hosting sado-masochistic sex parties in a semi-detached house in a quiet residential area. When a local journalist turned up posing as a participant, a man dressed as a dog and a woman encased in plastic wrapping were discovered.

Lib Dems have long been keen on pornography. In 1996 the then president of the Libs Dems and life peer, Robert Maclennan, who had recently called for the cleaning up of parliamentary sleaze was found to be profiting as a non-executive director of the parent company of one of the leading providers of international telephone lines used by the "dial-a-porn" business. 

In 2002 the party's spring conference approved calls for laws on pornography to be relaxed. The delegates voted in favour of allowing 16- and 17-year-olds to visit sex shops, and to act in hardcore pornography.