A Metropolitan Police misconduct panel has cleared Detective Inspector Michelle Peters of gross misconduct after she was accused of groping an ex-police staff member in a nightclub over 15 years earlier.
The allegation related to an incident said to have occurred sometime between 1st January 2009 and 31st December 2010, when Peters was a police sergeant and Mr A’s line manager. It was alleged she put her hand between Mr A’s thighs and touched his testicles without consent, conduct said to amount to gross misconduct and be serious enough to justify dismissal. Peters denied the allegation.
Mr A worked for the Metropolitan Police Service between 1995 and 2012 as a station reception officer. He now works for the British Transport Police. He first reported the allegation in March 2024 after officers attended his home address. In his statement, he described being on a team night out in Leicester Square, claiming Peters was ‘very drunk’, when she came up behind him at the bar, grabbed and squeezed his testicles, laughed, and walked away. He said nobody witnessed it, and he did not report it at the time. He further alleged that later in the evening Peters walked through Underground ticket gates without showing identification and told a member of staff to ‘fuck off’ when challenged.
The complainant also described a long-standing resentment about how he felt he was treated during his years working in police stations. Around the same time he raised an alleged ‘data breach’ involving return-to-work paperwork being sent to another employee with the same name, which he portrayed as deliberate. He further claimed that other members of staff treated him badly while working for the police and that when he raised the matter with his own mother, she laughed at him.
When asked why he had waited until 2024 to report the sexual assault and the data breach, Mr A said that recent counselling had prompted him to come forward. Separately, in reference to the alleged data breach, he said he did not pursue it at the time because he ‘couldn’t be arsed’.
Michelle Peters was interviewed under caution in May 2024 and said she had no recollection of Mr A or of any night out in Leicester Square. She denied ever grabbing him, denied swearing at him or a Transport for London employee, and explained that at the relevant time she had two young children, shared childcare with her husband (also a police officer), and worked opposite shifts, making ‘random’ nights out unrealistic. She said she socialised only for specific events, planned around childcare.
A criminal investigation was opened against Peters but later closed due to insufficient evidence to support a conviction.
In its decision, the panel concluded the allegation was not proved. It found Mr A’s account suffered from significant inconsistencies, including uncertainty about when the alleged assault occurred and contradictions in how he described the circumstances. The panel noted shifts in his evidence about whether the venue was ‘fairly packed’ or ‘not packed’, whether he was queuing at the bar, and whether the touching involved his penis as well as his testicles. Not only was the complainant unable to state what club or bar the assault took place in, he could not recollect the year, or the circumstances under which he found himself and colleagues going out together. Additionally, when giving evidence about the ticket evasion incident at the tube station, Mr A could not remember whether Peters had told him or staff to ‘fuck off’ at the time.
During cross examination, Mr A also introduced evidence that was not mentioned in his original statement, stating the names of two officers who he claimed were also at the event that night. The Panel found that this put DI Peters at a significant disadvantage in that, had that information been forthcoming earlier, she may have been able to make enquiries of those witnesses herself.
In summing up, the panel concluded that they found Mr A’s evidence to be inconsistent and lacking in credibility. They found that Mr. A held significant animosity – which may not have been unjustified on his account – towards the MPS, and a high degree of resentment towards those in management which had been developing over several years. The Panel concluded this may have impacted his recollection of events and his views of the motivation behind things that happened to him, for example defining the data breach as a deliberate, targeted act.
The panel found that the passage of time was highly detrimental to Peters’ ability to respond in detail, and it considered her evidence to be credible, consistent, and clear. It also placed weight on her previous good character, the absence of any similar allegations over the years, and character references which, the panel said, supported her account.
The hearing concluded that the allegations were not proved and that DI Michelle Peters had no case to answer.
OP-ED
It is obvious from reading the official report that this misconduct hearing should never have taken place. It was nothing more than political genuflexing by the Met, letting us all know that as far as sexual allegations are concerned, they swing both ways: male or female, all allegations are given the benefit of the doubt no matter how absurd, how far back in time they stretch, how baseless and lacking in evidence, how tainted the reputation of the complainant, and how obvious it is that an ulterior motive is at play.
The complainant had an axe to grind, that much is obvious. And it didn’t matter whose career he ruined in his bid to settle a score against a police force he claimed had once treated him badly. Perhaps he had been watching the way self-identified victims are canonised on social media these days and wanted a piece of the action. Who knows? All we do know is that DI Michelle Peters ultimately turned out to be the true victim in all of this. Being made subject to a criminal investigation and misconduct hearing on the say-so of a bittter and spiteful fantasist.
Unproven sexual allegations of this type should automatically result in an anonymity order being granted in favour of the officer concerned. It is manifestly unfair, that a person wrongfully accused of a sexual assault, who is exonerated at a civil hearing should still have to the suffer the ignominy of having their name attached to the proceedings in some way, while a clearly vexatious and dishonest complainant is granted anonymity. But unfortunately, the system we currently have is the imperfect marriage of public accountability and political posturing.
It is fair to say that police officers routinely prosecute innocent members of the public in this way, simply taking the victim’s word as gospel, placing initiatives and policies above rational thinking and proper detective work, so it is tempting to suggest that they deserve little sympathy when it is they who are on the receiving end of this type of show trial. But refusing to acknowledge the injustices that serving officers also experience due to the infatuation the state has with allegations of historic sex offences and hitting political targets, serves nobody.
Notch this one up as yet another abuse of process. There was not a shred of evidence to support this hearing, and it is disgusting that the Metropolitan Police thought there was any justification for bringing it.
