Married detective slept with junior staff and bragged about being a ‘sugar daddy'

Telegraph

18-02-2025

A married detective responsible for sex cases slept with junior police staff and bragged about being a 'sugar daddy', a tribunal has heard.
Det Ch Insp Roger Wood is accused of exploiting two staff after he boasted to them about his 'rank, importance and power'.
He faces two charges of gross misconduct for engaging in inappropriate emotional relationships with two women named as Ms A and Ms B.
The officer, of Hampshire Police, also faces a charge of excessive communications with Ms B.
Mr Wood had been a police officer for 16 years when he resigned in February 2024 and was nationally recognised for his work on sexual offences investigations and online predators.
He met the trainee police staff investigator Ms A at a domestic abuse conference in March 2023 and they flirted with each other, the hearing in Eastleigh, Hampshire was told.
They met again the next day at a police station in Basingstoke.
Mr Wood joked he was 'stalking' Ms A and told her the case he was investigating was 'only a murder when I say it is'.
'Exchanged flirtatious messages'
Afterwards Ms A messaged Mr Wood on LinkedIn and the pair exchanged a 'large number of flirtatious messages' including naked photos from Ms A, Jason Beer KC, counsel for Hampshire Police, told the hearing.
The senior officer responded to one of the nude images by offering to be Ms A's 'sugar daddy' and suggesting they make their own naked pictures when they met up.
Mr Wood had been warned by three other colleagues that Ms A was vulnerable and struggling at work.
But a few days later he drove to her home in Oxfordshire and the pair had sex.
The hearing was told Ms A was at her lowest when she met Mr Wood and on medication for anxiety and depression following a relationship breakdown.
Mr Wood denies any breach of conduct and says he went to Ms A's house to tell her he did not want to have a relationship with her.
Between May 2022 and April 2023 he was a senior adviser to the Police and Crime Commissioner and he met a young staff member, referred to only as Ms B, in August 2022.
Their relationship developed through Microsoft Teams with 9,965 messages exchanged between the pair over eight months.
Ms B told him she had ADHD, 'crippling anxiety and had been bullied in her previous job'.
Mr Wood asked Ms B to knit him socks with 'world's best detective' on them, said 'I am the SIO [Senior Investigating Officer] everyone wants' and told her he was 'too important' to attend a violence against women and girls meeting, Mr Beer KC said.