GMP officer formed secret sexual relationship with alleged rape victim and tried to thwart raid on her home

A police officer who formed a secret sexual relationship with an alleged rape victim and tried to thwart a raid on her home has been jailed. A judge told Simon Rose that he had let down his colleagues and the general public as he ordered him to serve three years in prison today.

“You have breached not only the trust of your immediate colleagues, people who saw you as a friend, but the trust the public expect and are entitled to have in police officers,” said Judge David Swinnerton. “Police officers behaving like you did damages trust in the whole police service and it is to the detriment of every single police officer and society as a whole,” he added.

Judge Swinnerton told Rose, an officer with Greater Manchester Police since 2007, that victims of sexual abuse feel under great pressure about reporting matters to the authorities. “It is wholly unacceptable if one of those factors might be them subsequently being targeted by a predatory police officer.”

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Rose, 48, was convicted of misconduct in public office and attempting to pervert the course of justice after a nine-day trial in January. “You took advantage of vulnerable victim by forming a sexual relationship with her,” said Judge Swinnerton.

He added that Rose admitted in cross-examination that forming a sexual or emotional relationship with such an alleged victim was entirely wrong. “But knowing it, that is precisely the sort of relationship you entered into.”

The judge pointed out that the defendant had carried out the clandestine relationship “behind your partner’s back and behind your colleagues backs.” Liverpool Crown Court heard that when a search warrant for firearms was to