Sturgeon says male MSP bullied her with sexual rumours
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The man, an MSP from another party who is still alive, repeatedly taunted her with the nickname 'Gnasher', including to her face, and would make pointed jokes about dentists and teeth in her presence.
'On the day I found out about the story, I cried in one of the toilets in the parliament office complex, wondering how I was ever going to face people,' she writes.
Whether the MSP had started the rumour or simply enjoyed repeating it to embarrass her, Sturgeon says: 'I do not know. It was untrue, and the fact I feel the need to say that is in itself horrible, but I was utterly mortified.'
She describes how the behaviour escalated to the point that she became 'quite scared of him', her heart racing whenever she saw him or heard his voice.
Although the taunting eventually subsided, the story would resurface as her profile in Scottish politics grew. Ms Sturgeon says she did not recognise it as bullying until 2017, when she was completing a Scottish Parliament survey prompted by the #MeToo movement.
'It was bullying of an overtly sexual nature, designed to humiliate and intimidate, to cut a young woman down to size and put her in her place,' she writes.
Ms Sturgeon says she considered naming the MSP in her book but decided against it: 'The thought of his face all over the media, and of the backlash he might try to whip up against me, makes me feel sick.
"Even just thinking about it transports me back to the day I cried in the toilet all those years ago. It is for my own sake that I am letting him off the hook. But he knows who he is. I can only hope that he has the decency to reflect on how his behaviour made me feel.'
The revelations are likely to prompt speculation about the man's identity. Dozens of male MSPs from the first Holyrood intake remain alive, with several still active in politics or public life.
Ms Sturgeon writes that she had thought such treatment was 'part and parcel of politics' and 'something I had to endure' — a view she now sees as evidence of how deeply ingrained sexism and misogyny were in Scotland's political culture at the time.
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