Police Sexual Abuse of Power

Much has been written about the culture of toxic masculinity, which is deeply entrenched in our Policing institutions, brought starkly to light by a number of tragedies. I was about to write ‘recent’ tragedies – but as the victims of the Police officer and serial rapist David Carrick, whose crimes spanned almost the entire length of his 20-year Police career, would testify – many of these atrocious acts and abuses of power go back decades, and are only now being brought to light. It took the rape and murder of Sarah Everard in 2021 for the Police to start properly policing themselves.

Whilst the number of predatory rapists amongst Police ranks – the real wolves in sheep’s clothing – is thankfully low, the wider number of Officers who abuse their privileged position to form improper sexual relationships with vulnerable women whom they have met through the course of their Policing duties, exploiting the special access they have to these women’s lives, is shockingly high.  It is the very behaviour of those Officers who treat a career in the Police like a ‘stag weekend’ in Amsterdam, and the other Officers who tolerate this ‘locker room’ culture, which has formed the environment where monstrous outliers such as Carrick and Wayne Couzens were able to prosper and ‘hide in plain sight’.

I don’t think a week had gone by in 2023 without the media reporting on another ‘sexploitation’ case, and here are just a few recent examples –

• PC Rhett Wilson (West Mercia Police) – who bragged to friends about his sexual relationships with multiple domestic violence victims, which he dubbed “Big R slaying more victims of crime”. Wilson had left the Force and joined the Army by the time justice caught up with him, but has now been jailed for his offences.

• PC Jonathan Simon (Metropolitan Police) – who stalked and harassed a woman whom he met on duty, and who at one point he encouraged to turn to prostitution, convicted of stalking following a trial at Westminster Magistrates Court in March and this month receiving a suspended prison sentence for his crime. Although he has been suspended from duty, PC Simon has not yet been dismissed from the Met and is awaiting a misconduct hearing.

• PC John Kelham (North Wales Police)  – assigned to the case of a domestic violence victim, and aware that she had a history of mental health issues, Kelham repeatedly contacted the woman on social media, describing her as ‘gorgeous’ and asking for photographs of her in the bath.  This then led to a sexual relationship between PC Kelham and the woman which the Officer continued to pursue even when his behaviour was under investigation by the Professional Standards Department, and he had been warned not to contact her.  As is often the case, the Officer when first challenged over his behaviour denied having a sexual relationship with the woman and claimed she was ‘a liar’.  At a disciplinary hearing in March 2023, the panel found PC Kelham’s behaviour amounted to gross misconduct and the Officer would have been dismissed if he was still serving on the Force – however he had resigned whilst the misconduct charges were pending.

• PC Simon Miller (Humberside Police) –After meeting a vulnerable victim of crime following an incident in 2021 Miller had engaged in a sexual relationship with her. Having been sacked following a misconduct hearing last August, this ex-officer now awaits sentence at Grimsby Crown Court and has been warned that he might face jail for his crime.

• PC Christopher Grant (Wiltshire Police) – another Officer who would have been dismissed from the profession had he not already resigned. A misconduct hearing in March 2023 concluded that PC Grant had abused his position after being assigned to investigate a woman’s report of sexual assault in July 2022, bombarding her with more than 2,000 text messages over the next 2 months, some of which were of a clearly sexual nature, and also following her on social media. It was found that Grant had entered into a sexual and improper emotional relationship with the woman.  This former Officer has now been placed on the National Police Barred List.  

Data obtained earlier this year by the Observer newspaper confirmed that since 2018 nearly 80 Police Officers in 22 Forces across England and Wales have faced disciplinary action for inappropriate sexual relationships or sexual contact with victims.  As Jemima Olchawski, Chief Executive of the Fawcett Society Women’s Rights Charity told the Observer “Women come into contact with the Police at moments of incredible vulnerability and trauma – exploiting those moments and abusing power heaps further pain onto those experiences”.  https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/mar/04/dozens-of-uk-police-officers-disciplined-over-relationships-with-victims-witnesses

(It should also be noted that the Metropolitan Police, along with seven other Forces, declined to respond to the Freedom of Information Request).

Those stark figures, shocking as they are, are therefore likely to only be the tip of the iceberg – with some Forces apparently deliberately hiding the information from media scrutiny. My own experience leads me to conclude that there are many victims of this form of insidious abuse of power who by reason of shame, fear, mental ill health or other psychological barriers have not yet reported the crimes perpetrated against them by the very men who were supposed to be protecting them. Indeed, there is a strong argument to say that until Policing recruitment and culture has been fundamentally reformed, only female Officers should be assigned to deal with domestic abuse victims. 

Superintendent Andy Maultby of Humberside Police said, in regards to the case of PC Simon Miller, that Miller had “completely abused his position of trust” taking advantage of someone “when she was in need of support” and that Miller’s conduct “was utterly condemnable and unforgivable”.

Supt Maultby is just one of many senior Officers who now line up to condemn predatory Police Officers in the strongest terms – but in my opinion Police leadership must bear its own share of responsibility for having presided over a profession which was for so many decades a hospitable environment for abusers.  What begins with ‘locker room’ banter, ends in acts of sexual exploitation and for far, far too long this simply wasn’t taken seriously by the Police, who appeared to revel in their own ‘lads will be lads’ culture. By way of illustration, I am presently handling a claim on behalf of a woman who was, within weeks of her arrest in 2004, propositioned and made pregnant by the very officer who had arrested and interviewed her – his ‘seduction’ beginning when he stroked my client’s hand during her fingerprinting process.

Unlike many similar abuses of power, which have only recently been reported, my client did report this officer to his superiors and a Professional Standards enquiry in 2005 concluded that the officer had behaved “in a totally inappropriate and unprofessional manner…[casting] serious doubts on his suitability to be dealing with vulnerable females” – but ‘back then’  this was evidently not considered by the Police to be an offence for which an officer should be sacked, let alone face jail, and the perpetrator was let off with a ‘formal written warning.’

Another such example is that of the recently reported case of Humberside Police officer Craig Mattinson, whose 2003 admission that he had had sex with a burglary victim was at the time only deemed worthy of the lowest possible misconduct sanction – “management advice” – and who was allowed to continue in the Force, rising to the rank of Inspector, before being sacked earlier this year after he was found guilty of groping two teenage girls.

What can you do if this has happened to you?

Whereas the complaint of my client in 2005 was a ‘voice in the wilderness’  – and one which would have probably fallen on deaf ears had it not been for her pregnancy – there is no doubt that times have changed for the better, albeit that impetus for change has not come from within the Police themselves, and there has never been a better time for the victims of Police sexual abuse of power to come forwards and seek justice, whether the abuse that they have suffered occurred two weeks or two decades ago.

It is entirely right and proper that the officers who abused the privileges of their position to pursue women for sex, be held to account and dismissed from the Force and sentenced for their crimes, to jail if necessary. Victims who courageously report these crimes are doing more than Police leadership ever did to make the Police better and, crucially, to prevent other people being victimised in the future.

It is also entirely right and proper that victims receive appropriate compensation from the Police Forces themselves, which are indeed not only morally but legally accountable for their officers’ abuse of power, even if the sexual relationship was on the face of it ‘consensual.’  The reality is that a Police officer pursuing a victim of crime, a person they have arrested or a person suffering an episode of mental ill health – all vulnerable people with whom officers regularly come into contact in the course of their duties – for a sexual relationship, whether by way of phone calls/ text messages or social media as well as physical contact, constitutes misfeasance in public office and/or harassment i.e civil wrongs for which damages are payable to the victim.

Over the course of the last decade, I have recovered hundreds of thousands of pounds compensation on behalf of victims of Police sexual abuse of power. These officers groom and gaslight women whom they are fully aware are vulnerable to their ‘advances’ by reason of crises in their personal lives – often physical or sexual abuse at the hands of other men, of which they will now gleefully take advantage for their own sexual gratification.

If this has happened to you, contact me for help and advice.  If the Police have abused their power over you, I can show you how to use the civil justice system to show them that you have power too.