Imran Ahmad Khan has announced he will resign as an MP after he was thrown out of the Conservative Party following his conviction this week for sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy.
It means Boris Johnson faces a potentially difficult by-election in the Wakefield constituency - one of the so-called Red Wall seats the Tories snatched from Labour in 2019.
Khan was expelled from the Tories moments after a guilty verdict was returned against him on Monday over an historic offence in 2008.
A court heard how Khan forced the teenager to drink gin and tonic, dragged him upstairs, pushed him onto a bed and asked him to watch pornography before the attack.
The victim said he wasn't "taken very seriously" when he made the allegation to the Conservative Party press office days before Khan was elected as the MP for Wakefield in West Yorkshire in 2019.
He made a complaint to police days after Khan helped Prime Minister Boris Johnson win a large Commons majority.
In a statement posted to Twitter, Khan said: "While legal proceedings are ongoing, I do not believe that it would ordinarily be appropriate to resign.
"However, owing to long delays in the legal process, my constituents have already been without visible parliamentary representation for a year. Even in the best case scenario, anticipated legal proceedings could last many more months.
"I have therefore regrettably come to the conclusion that it is intolerable for constituents to go years without an MP who can amplify their voices in Parliament.
"Representing them has been the honour of my life, and they deserve better than this.
"Consequently I am resigning as MP for Wakefield and withdrawing from political life."
Khan's victim, now in his 20s, told a jury he was left feeling "scared, vulnerable, numb, shocked and surprised" after Khan touched his feet and legs, coming within "a hair's breadth" of his privates, as he went to sleep in a top bunkbed.
He ran to his parents and a police report was made at the time, but no further action was taken because the youngster did not want to make a formal complaint.
But he told jurors "it all came flooding back" when he learned Khan was standing in the December 2019 general election.
The Tory hopeful was literally parachuted into the constituency in a skydiving stunt after he was selected to replace Antony Calvert weeks before the election.
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