Sexual predators in the British police are abusing power to target victims, investigation warns

Sexual predators among the police are abusing their power to rape, sexually assault and harass the victims of crime they are supposed to be helping, it has emerged.

There have been more than 50 cases in four years of officers who were either found to have abused their position to rape, sexually assault of harass women or were investigated over such claims.

But campaigners warn that the scale of the problem is largely hidden, with no official statistics kept and few details released about internal disciplinary action relating to such cases.

An investigation by the Guardian analysed the data available, including court cases and misconduct proceedings, in an attempt to estimate the scale of sexual corruption with the police.

It found that officers have been convicted or disciplined for crimes ranging from rape and sexual assault to misconduct in public office relating to inappropriate sexual behaviour with vulnerable women they have met while on duty.

Other officers are awaiting trial for alleged offences, though many are never formally charged and are dealt with through the force's own internal disciplinary procedures.

The investigation, to be concluded by November, was prompted by the case of Stephen Mitchell, a constable with Northumbria police who was last year jailed last year for raping women while on duty.

Mitchell, 43, assaulted drug addicts in the cells and interview rooms of a city-centre police station, knowing that if they complained they were unlikely to be believed.

Questions have been raised about the efficacy of vetting for police recruits after it emerged his bosses were unaware Mitchell had already stood trial for sex offences before joining the force.

Those targeted by police officers are mostly women, but in some terrible cases complaints have come from children and young people.

Many of the complaints have come from female officers, amid claims that there is a pervasive culture of sexism within the police force where abusive behaviour is allowed to carry on unchecked.

In many cases, officers used the police national computer to track down vulnerable women and young people and bombard them with phone calls and texts in an attempt to initiate sexual contact.

Debaleena Dasgupta, a lawyer who has worked with women sexually assaulted and raped by policemen, told the Guardian the victims she works with are among the most damaged victims of sex crimes.

'The damage is far deeper because they trusted the police and ... believed that the police were supposed to protect them from harm and help catch and punish those who perpetrate it.

'The breach of that trust has an enormous effect: they feel that if they can't trust a police officer, who can they trust?'

The police officers involved in sexual misconduct are drawn from all ranks, with the most senior example being a deputy chief constable who was subject to 26 complaints from 13 colleagues.

Deputy Chief Constable David Ainsworth, from Wiltshire Police, hanged himself in his garage fearing he would 'lose everything' because of the misconduct inquiry.

In another case, a detective sergeant was jailed for eight years after he broke into the home of a woman he had met on a date and raped her while her child lay sleeping in a nearby room.

Trevor Gray attacked the 43-year-old woman after the pair had been out for drinks in Nottingham city centre that night, after meeting through mutual friends.

The Guardian's research into police officers abusing their authority to commit sex crimes is the first attempt to investigate the scale of the problem which has long been susptected anecdotally.

The 56 cases documented by the paper happened between 2008 and 2012 and involve 25 forces, 48 officers from the rank of constable up to deputy chief constable, five police community support officers, one special constable, one civilian police officer and one member of police staff.

Cases included abuse of position to commit rape, sexual assault, harassment, grooming, and inappropriate relationships with vulnerable women and young girls. Some are still awaiting trial over alleged offences.

Perhaps the worst case involved Constable Stephen Mitchell of Northumbria Police, who was jailed for life in November last year for raping and sexually assaulting women he met on duty.

Ten victims of Mitchell are now seeking compensation from the force, which has already paid out £31,500 to some of the women and is still considering other claims.

One of Mitchell's victims a 19-year-old drug addict when he first struck, estimated she had been abused 100 times as he kept track of her using the police computer.

Yet his colleagues ignored a series of warnings about his behaviour – some of them from his own wife. They were unaware that he had already stood trial for sex offences before he was recruited to the force.

He was eventually sacked in 2007 for having ‘consensual’ sex with one of his victims, only to be reinstated on appeal eight months later.

And when he was finally stopped, a senior detective with Northumbria Police offered him ‘a get out of jail free card’ if he agreed to resign. He refused, opting to take his chances in court.

Mitchell – a tall, muscular former soldier – was found guilty of two rapes, three indecent assaults and six charges of misconduct in a public office, involving a total of seven women.

He was cleared of three further rape charges, two indecent assaults and counts of misconduct involving another nine women. But police suspect he attacked at least a further 14.

In another, similar case Derbyshire Police Constable Jasbir Dhanda was jailed for two-and-a-half years in January for having sex with a prostitute while on duty in return for not arresting her.

Dhanda, 52, regularly turned up at the woman’s house in uniform and demanded sex in return for not executing a warrant on her. He also targeted two other vulnerable women, one a crime victim, by using a police computer to access their details.

The IPCC, the police watchdog, last month published a report on police corruption which identified abuse of authority by officers for personal gain, including engaging in sexual intercourse with women while on duty, as one of the five key corruption threats to effective policing.

Another threat identified was the use of police computer systems to access details of vulnerable females.

The watchdog's figures show that 15 per cent of the 837 corruption cases they investigated between 2008 and 2011 involved abuse of authority by an officer, while 9 per cent involved misuse of databases.

One area the IPCC must examine is whether there have been vetting failures during a massive surge in police recruitment from 2001 onwards. The overall manpower of the service grew by more than 16,000 between 2001 and 2007.

In the case of Mitchell, the rapist constable had been investigated in 1991 over the alleged attempted rape of two men and sexual assault of a third while he was serving in the Armed Forces. Military police questioned him but the case went no further after he claimed that it was nothing more than ‘horseplay’.

In 1997, following a complaint from one of the alleged victims in the Army sex case, he stood trial in Edinburgh only for it to collapse when two witnesses refused to give evidence.

Even so, the allegations alone should have been enough to end his police career before it had begun – but thanks to an extraordinary oversight, details were not recorded on the police intelligence database. If they had been, it is almost certain there would have been enough doubt about his character to stop his recruitment by the Northumbria force.

A study of vetting within the police service by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary six years ago revealed 'disturbing' failures that had allowed suspect individuals to become police officers.

While many sexual predators target vulnerable women they meet while on duty, often their victims are among their own colleagues inside the police station, strengthening the culture of impunity surrounding sexist, exploitative behaviour.

Professor Jennifer Brown of the Mannheim centre for criminology at the London School of Economics carried out a survey 19 years ago which revealed 800 policewomen had claimed to have suffered rape of sexual assaults at the hands of male colleagues. The Home Office never published the results of the research.

Inspector Kate Pain, the Police Federation chair for Wiltshire police, where Deputy Chief Constable David Ainsworth received his 26 complaints before committing suicide last year, said the sexist culture within the force discouraged many women from speaking out.

'The police force is still male-dominated and it is very difficult for people to come forward to challenge poor behaviour and performance because they are worried about promotion to the next rank, they are worried about not being supported by their boss and they are worried about being isolated,' she told the Guardian.

Deputy Chief Constable Bernard Lawson of Merseyside police, Acpo's lead on counter-corruption, who is working with the IPCC on the joint report, told the Guardian abuses of power were having an 'incredibly damaging impact' on public trust in the force.

'There is a determination throughout policing to identify and remove those who betray the reputation of the overwhelming majority of officers,' he said.

Original report here




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