A former Essex Police constable has been found to have formed an improper emotional relationship with a rape victim, where she made visits to the woman’s home, sent her love messages and slept in bed with her, yet the force framed the relationship as ‘non-sexual in nature’.
Assistant Chief Constable Glen Pavelin, who chaired the hearing, set out the allegations against the unamed PC, who was granted anonymity solely on the basis ‘to protect her privacy’. It was alleged that between December 2022 and October 2023 the officer formed an improper emotional relationship with ‘Ms P’ – a complainant in a case of alleged historic sexual abuse for which she was the officer in the case. The panel concluded the relationship involved sharing romantic text messages, social contact, multiple visits by Ms P to Essex, including staying at the officer’s home, sharing her bed and making videos of the two of them hugging and lying in bed together.
The officer was allocated the victim’s case on 29th October 2022 and made initial contact shortly afterwards. The record describes her moving communication onto WhatsApp from her personal mobile phone, ostensibly because of ‘technical issues’ with email and Teams. A transcript of the messages showed contact every few days, escalating into what the panel described as a high-volume exchange – over 3,000 messages between December 2022 and October 2023.
The report cited two crucial WhatsApp exchanges in full:
At 9.27pm on 25 March the following messages were exchanged: “PC A: Hey friend, I’m in bed, I can’t move, come join me when you’re ready!! #tirednesskills.” Ms P replied “Do you want me to turn the lamp in the kitchen off? …Didn’t want to come up in case you was still on the phone.” PC A replied No babe you can leave it & the one in the lounge I normally do X.”
On the 3rd April 2023 Ms P Whatsapped the following message to PC A: “sad (sad face emoji) hopefully not lon until our next sleepover, sleeping alone sucks for realsy xx. PC A replied “Aww beautiful we’ll see each other soon, for realsys, how’s today been? Xx@ [Ms P].”
The panel highlighted how quickly the tone moved away from professional contact. Messages used terms of endearment, emotive language, and frequent sign-offs with kisses, with the relationship described by the complainant in explicitly personal terms. The panel accepted that this was not a one-sided dynamic: it found the volume and content showed a mutual exchange, and that it went ‘way beyond’ what would be expected between an investigator and a complainant.
Ms P made six visits to Essex during the relevant period, with three involving stays at the officer’s home. The panel accepted evidence that the officer introduced Ms P to family members, and that Ms P became emotionally dependent on the officer – a dependency the panel found was encouraged, whether intentionally or not, by the officer’s approach.
The officer eventually disclosed the relationship to her sergeant on 18th October 2023, describing it as a friendship and acknowledging she had been communicating on her personal phone. The panel found she had tried to minimise and downplay the extent of what had taken place and, in places, attempted to shift responsibility onto Ms P. It concluded the relationship created an actual or potential conflict of interest and had the potential to compromise the integrity and quality of the investigation, as well as harm a vulnerable complainant.
The panel treated the officer’s behaviour as an abuse of position and a serious breach of professional boundaries, however stopped short of describing it as sexual in nature. The former officer had resigned on 18th August 2025, but the panel stated that had she still been serving, dismissal would have been the appropriate outcome.
Before the hearing, the panel granted the former officer anonymity under Regulation 36, directing that she be referred to as ‘Officer A’. The chair’s written reasoning for granting anonymity was that it would respect the officer’s Article 8 privacy rights – a right that is not an automatic feature of misconduct hearings, and one that is routinely refused to other Essex officers facing similar allegations.
