Hundreds of police officers accused of domestic violence keep their jobs
Over a thousand police officers were accused of domestic violence in the last three years – but hardly any got the chop.
Just 69 constables lost their jobs or voluntarily quit over abuse allegations, despite 1,240 complaints being logged. Some forces with a slew of serious reports failed to sack a single officer.
Our figures, obtained under Freedom of Information laws, came as the government pledged £50 million to tackle violence against women and girls. The Metropolitan Police, Britain's largest force, recorded 523 abuse allegations against staff between 2022 and 2024, yet only 53 got the boot. Across the other 28 forces that responded to our requests, 16 officers were dismissed over the same period.
Twenty Hertfordshire officers were accused of domestic violence but all kept their jobs. Of the 14 complaints logged by West Midlands police, just one was asked to undertake 'reflective practice'. In Bedfordshire, 22 people were accused but only three were fired or voluntarily resigned. Several forces failed to provide figures so the true number of allegations is likely far higher.
Last night Ellie Butt, of domestic abuse charity Refuge, said: 'It is essential that police handling of violence against women and girls is scrutinised but this alone isn't enough. Labour committed to the suspension of all officers accused of domestic abuse or sexual offences pending an investigation.
'The government must make good on this manifesto pledge as a matter of urgency. We keenly await further details of plans to improve police vetting, which is integral to rooting out police perpetrators, protecting survivors, and restoring police confidence in the justice system as a whole. Women's confidence in the justice system is currently at a crisis point and we continue to see abuse perpetrated by police officers themselves.'
A string of abusive officers have lost their jobs in recent years. PC Amarjit Dhallu, who worked with vulnerable children, was dismissed from Kent police in 2021 over allegations he strangled a former partner and hit her with a belt. Detective sergeant Paul Whitehurst, who worked in Warwickshire Police 's anti-corruption unit, was jailed after admitting five charges of beating an ex-girlfriend.
A Met police spokesperson said: 'We are committed to rooting out officers and staff whose behaviour falls below the high standards expected. We have stepped up our commitment to tackling allegations of domestic abuse against our officers and staff, as we understand the heavy impact of such offending on victim-survivors.
The National Police Chiefs' Council added: 'We need the strongest possible response to police perpetrators of domestic abuse that protects victims and gives the public confidence in policing.
The government scheme announced last Thursday will see perpetrators offered one-to-one support to help them come off drugs and alcohol and resolve their personal issues. Home Office minister Jess Phillips said the money would give victims a 'better and safer future'.
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Daily Mail
2 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Forget the White Van Man stereotype. The truth, finds ROBERT HARDMAN, is that the Epping hotel protests are being led by concerned mothers
Civil disorder – or civil war? It could almost be the film set for a suburban apocalypse drama. There are police vans tailing back down leafy lanes all around Epping. Platoons of coppers in full riot garb have been massing at the station, along the Georgian high street and out in the woods since mid-morning. Units have been bussed in from Hampshire, Staffordshire, Bedfordshire, Norfolk, Suffolk and Kent, in addition to the Metropolitan Police. It's the sort of presence you might expect for a grudge match between Premier League arch-rivals or a full-fat Hamas solidarity parade through central London. Instead, these reinforcements have swamped Sir Rod Stewart 's pretty former home town in semi-rural Essex to help the local force keep an eye on 150 locals standing across the road from The Bell Hotel. What is immediately apparent is that many of the protesters are women and children. Indeed, this whole protest has been organised by women. Many – if not most – of the passing motorists who honk their horns in support are also women, including one who drives back and forth eagerly beep-beeping away in her claret Land Rover Discovery (you can forget the White Van Man stereotypes in this corner of Essex). What has galvanised these residents is a near-universal demand for the closure of The Bell as an accommodation centre for migrants following a recent attack on a 14-year-old schoolgirl. A hotel guest, a 38-year-old Ethiopian man, who had arrived in Britain eight days earlier, has been charged with three sexual assaults and denies them all. Suddenly the debate on small boat migration has become incendiary. Protests here a week ago turned violent when far-Left activists were escorted in by Essex Police to stage a counter-demo. That, in turn, brought out the usual suspects on the hard-Right and things soon turned ugly. By Thursday, though, there is no prospect of trouble because there are no dissenting voices. The rent-a-mob from Stand Up To Racism – a masked offshoot of the Socialist Workers Party – have not turned up. Nor have any hard-Right saboteurs allied to the toxic Tommy Robinson. It is raining, after all. That has not deterred the true believers who have a fervent desire to see The Bell – now fenced off and looking more like a disused military base – either bulldozed or transformed back into the local wedding venue of yesteryear. And I mean everyone. That not only applies to the drenched posse marching on the local council offices, chanting 'Save Our Kids' and 'Starmer Out', but the councillors gathered in the chamber – including Sir Keir Starmer's own man. Epping Forest council only has one Labour councillor, Martin Morris. Even he joins the Tories, Reform, the Lib Dems, the solitary Green and sundry Independents in a unanimous vote to demand the immediate closure of The Bell. In fact, they all demand a lot more than that in a thumping two-page motion which also calls for the closure of another hotel-turned-migrant centre up the road. All media eyes have been on The Bell of late, but the situation is not much better at The Phoenix Hotel. That mysteriously caught fire four months ago, although asylum seekers still occupy most of it. The man charged with arson has turned out to be a guest at The Phoenix who was then generously rehoused at, you guessed it, The Bell. The same man has been charged with trying to burn that down, too. There is a thunderous standing ovation in both the gallery and the council chamber after Tory councillor Shane Yerrell reads out a message from the father of the girl subjected to the recent assault. 'I do not want or condone any of the violence that has taken place at the protest,' says the message from the unnamed dad. 'I just want the hotel to be moved, not only away from our streets, but away from making any other family feel how we're feeling right now. 'It's not fair that the Government is putting our children and grandchildren at risk. I didn't think my little girl's story would be as big as it was.' His daughter, he adds, has been greatly comforted by messages of support and a JustGiving page which has raised £3,000 for counselling. 'Eventually we will get her confidence back to the point where she is able to go out without feeling scared.' The father, it transpires, is actually in the gallery. We have now, very clearly, got beyond the point where the Government can trot out the usual mantra 'It's all the Tories' fault and we've got this migration thing under control ' and expect things to blow over. The default position of the legal establishment, the police and most of us in the media – namely that the main problem is dark online forces stirring up xenophobia – is manifestly no longer tenable. Having spent the previous week in northern France watching the people smugglers, I have spent this week looking at the other end of the equation. I have seen the protests popping up in Epping and Canary Wharf, east London (where a huge hotel has just been commandeered by the Home Office). And there are two very striking trends to this new wave of popular protest. The first is that the protagonists are being open about it. They tell me their names and stories. There is no sense of shame or fear of being branded a 'racist' any more. The second is that this is very much a unisex campaign, if not an overtly female one. One of the main architects of the peaceful protests in Epping is Orla Minihane, a mother of three teenagers and now a vocal council candidate for the Reform Party. 'I think women are naturally more tolerant – we have got to put up with men after all – but when you start to threaten our children, then we snap,' says Mrs Minihane, who is marching through the rain waving not the Cross of St George, like some of the men, but the green, white and purple flag of the Suffragette movement. She's lived in Epping since childhood, has worked for a City bank for 25 years and is married to Scott who owns a building business ('and can't stand this political stuff'). Mrs Minihane says she was appalled by last week's violence in the town and blames Essex Police for facilitating a Left-wing counter-demo which, she says, triggered all the aggro. It has prompted Reform leader Nigel Farage to call for the resignation of the chief constable. 'There was only trouble when the police caused it,' he says. For the Tories, Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp says that Essex Police 'lamentably failed to keep the protesters apart'. Mrs Minihane says: 'The day after that trouble I went on our Facebook group – there's about 700 of us – and said we are never going to win if we have more protests like that. We need to change the narrative. So we ordered a batch of T-shirts saying 'We Are The Children's Voice'. And we are going to show that this problem is much worse than people think it is.' She talks of repeated incidents of women being pestered while jogging or walking their dogs and recounts the story of a friend, a mother of four girls. Her 15-year-old, she said, was chased on the local common by a man who, she says, was living at The Bell. 'She told the police, who did nothing at first,' says Mrs Minihane. 'When she went back again, they told her to be careful. They said: 'Remember what happened to those protesters after Southport.' But we're not putting up with that any more.' I later verify the story with the girl's mother. Mr Farage explains that what Mrs Minihane is doing in Epping reflects a broader trend. 'The boats issue is increasingly becoming a female issue. Mums for Reform, call it what you will, is a real thing,' he says, pointing to this month's Tory-to-Reform defections of Laura Anne Jones, a member of the Welsh Senedd, and Westminster city councillor, Laila Cunningham, along with a marked shift in the party's membership. Having been 58 per cent male and 42 per cent female at the last election, he says, it is now 50:50. It's hard to see what more the Tory-run council can do. All are as one when it comes to the failings of the Home Office, which commandeered the hotel without consulting the locals first. 'We are speaking to the Home Office on a regular basis. I have to say to you, at the present time, they have not been overly co-operative,' council leader Chris Whitbread tells the meeting. Holly Whitbread, his fellow Tory councillor (and daughter), is more forthright: 'It is my firm belief that the Government is now treating our community with contempt. Contempt for local democracy, contempt for public safety, contempt for our town which deserves better than this.' The hotel has been the trigger for plenty of other complaints, too. Hairdresser Barry Seago tells me that today alone he has had five cancellations from customers worried about trouble in the town. Locals point to the trouble they have in finding an NHS dentist – hence their fury when they saw a mobile dental unit turn up at The Bell. This week has also seen protests an hour away at Canary Wharf, where the Home Office has taken over the vast Britannia International Hotel, which has 531 bedrooms, as a new accommodation centre. I remember the days when my old newspaper used to hold (rather dreary) office parties there. It might be more Alan Partridge than The Ritz but it's not cheap. As Whitehall maintains its customary reluctance to discuss these things, rumours are rampant that migrants will be housed three to a room, suggesting a new population of 1,500 predominantly young, undocumented adult men with nothing to do. Here, I meet a small group of protesters in the rain, all native East Enders who live around here. Once again, they are happy to be identified. 'You've got working people round here using food banks – my Mum runs one – and then people are being put up here on three square meals a day and we don't know anything about who they are,' says Ben Cavanagh, 45, a scaffolder and father of three. Fellow scaffolder Matthew John-Lewis, 44, says tensions have gone off the scale. 'I'm busting my arse off to pay taxes for all this. I can barely afford the rent on a two-bedroom flat and this lot get given everything,' argues the father of four children. He adds that he does not want his children to be targeted by gangs of bored young men who 'don't understand' British culture. 'And don't anyone dare call us racist. My family were immigrants and I'm three-quarters black,' he says. The hefty police presence here and the even bigger one in Epping are an acknowledgement that we are at a very ugly tipping point. With another Stand Up To Racism protest against the residents of Epping – or 'organised Nazis' as they call them – planned for Sunday, further outbreaks of violence are no longer a question of if – but when.
Daily Mirror
4 hours ago
- Daily Mirror
Ghislaine Maxwell questioned directly about Prince Andrew's friendship with paedo Epstein
Ghislaine Maxwell was today quizzed about Prince Andrew's friendship with Jeffrey Epstein by US government lawyers. Insiders told the Mirror how the convicted teen sex trafficker was questioned about the royal as she was asked about her knowledge of '100 different people' related to the late child Wall Street financier. A source said: 'No one was off limits. The interview was meticulous as it was long. Ghislaine was quizzed about everyone she knew in Epstein's circle, including the Duke. Nothing was left on the table.' Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year sentence in a Florida prison after being sentenced in 2022. She is not due for release until July 2037. After being questioned by Donald Trump 's Deputy Attorney General, Todd Blanche, for two days, Maxwell's lawyer confirmed she had not held back from answering questions about anyone. 'We started this morning (Fri) right around 9 o'clock, and went to now lunchtime, and we're finished after all day, yesterday and today,' her attorney David Oscar Markus said. 'Ghislaine answered every single question asked of her over the last day and a half, she answered those questions honestly, truthfully, to the best of her ability. She never invoked a privilege. She never refused to answer a question.' He added: 'They asked about every single, every possible thing you could imagine. Everything.' The meeting with Maxwell came just weeks after the Department of Justice announced it would not release any Epstein files - a move that has sparked outrage among survivors. It has also, more critically for Trump, sparked a civil war among his MAGA supporters, seeing thousands turn on after he campaigned for the White House on a promise to release all information on the sex offender. The president, now scrambling to contain the political fallout, is said to be privately furious at the backlash from his own base. Markus said Maxwell was being used as the 'scapegoat' in the entire Epstein case and has been 'treated unfairly for the last five years.' Her attorney said that they had not put in a formal request with the White House for a pardon for Maxwell, 63, following the conclusion of her questioning. But Markus didn't rule one out completely, saying, 'Things are happening so quickly. The president said earlier he has the power to do so, we hope he exercises that power in the right way,' he added. Last night, a source told the Mirror that in addition to being quizzed about Andrew, she was also questioned about Bill Clinton. Both the Duke of York and the former president are documented as flying on Epstein's private 'Lolita Express' jet and pictured with him at various times. Andrew famously refused to speak to the FBI. In 2020, when he was the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Geoffrey Berman made the extremely rare decision to publicly blast the Duke. He accused the Prince of "seeking to falsely portray himself" as eager to help his Epstein inquiry before he accused Andrew of providing "zero cooperation." Berman claimed that despite public statements to the contrary, the royal had "repeatedly declined" requests to schedule an interview. Andrew's legal team denied his claims, insisting that the Duke offered to assist authorities on at least three occasions. He was later accused of having sex on three separate occasions with Epstein's 'teen sex slave' Virginia Giuffre, which the Duke emphatically denied. In 2019, she accused the royal of sexually abusing her on three occasions when she was 17 - claims he vehemently denied. Facing a civil lawsuit in New York, Andrew opted to settle out of court in early 2022, reportedly paying Giuffre £12 million. He issued no apology and continued to protest his innocence, insisting he had no memory of ever meeting her despite the now-infamous photo of them together with Maxwell grinning in the background. It was unclear whether Blanche intends to question her further. Markus said he did not know whether the discussions would have any impact on her case. With Maxwell's questioning finished, Markus added: "We don't know how it's going to play out. We just know that this was the first opportunity she's ever been given to answer questions about what happened and so the truth will come out about what happened with Mr Epstein, and she's the person who's answering those questions.'
Daily Mirror
5 hours ago
- Daily Mirror
'My serial killer dad Fred West was monster, but Mum did the unthinkable to us kids'
On the anniversary of Cromwell Street trial, Fred and Rose West's son reveals what it was really like growing up in the House of Horrors - and how he once tried to kill his father, only to get an unexpected reaction Few could make worse parents than Fred and Rose West. Their daughter Heather, 16, was strangled, dismembered in the family bath (with a kitchen knife so as not to scratch the enamel) and buried under the patio. West's eight-year-old stepdaughter Charmaine was discovered kneecapped and dissected under their previous home. And not one but two of West's pregnant mistresses were found in unofficial graves, both just a few weeks shy of being full term. West's ex-wife Rena was in a nearby field, a runaway was buried under what had been a paddling pool. Another woman was under the bathroom floor and five more were in the cellar - where the youngest West children slept. But those who survived life at Gloucester's 25 Cromwell Street did not count themselves that much luckier. Author Howard Sounes helped break the West story as a Mirror reporter in 1994, and as the leading expert on the case recently gained access to more than 100 hours of Fred West's unheard police interviews. Now in Day One of our serialisation of his new book The Fred West Tapes: Secrets of the Fred & Rose West Murder Investigation, he shares his harrowing previously-unpublished interview with West's son Barry, revealing what it was really like growing up in Britain's House of Horrors….. Anna-Marie West was just eight when her father and stepmum first raped her. Thereafter, rape became routine. She was strapped to metal torture contraptions that builder Fred West made at work - and told it was perfectly normal. Some, but not all, of the West children were used for sexual pleasure not only by Fred and Rose. Once a few of them were allowed to go to their parents' party - only, according to one child, to be molested by drunken men with their parents' encouragement. Incest was part of Fred's DNA, and child abuse was as routine as mealtimes at 25 Cromwell Street. But, bizarrely, it wasn't always their father who inspired the most fear amongst the West children. It was Rose. The mum and stepmum has denied all allegations against her for 30 years. But in November 1995, she was found guilty of 10 counts of murder between 1971 and 1987. During the trial, the court heard abundant evidence of her committing serious sexual and physical assaults against children. She later became only the second woman - after Myra Hindley - to be handed a Whole Life Order, meaning she'll never be freed. Many of her children, like her son Barry, received a life sentence of their own - never recovering from the trauma the Wests inflicted. He struggled with his mental health and had been used drugs. He sadly died two years after meeting me to describe the full horror of life inside the House of Horrors. It is only now I can share that interview for the first time. 'My dad was a solid monster,' Barry told me. 'But she [Rose] was a complete psycho. That's what people don't know: My mum was, child abuse-wise, the main person. My mum was completely sick in the head. She beat me way more than my dad did, and enjoyed it, absolutely enjoyed it.' When the West children were young they were made to sleep in the cellar, often locked in there at night, sometimes strapped to their beds. Rose was her children's gaoler, wearing the keys to the cellar around her neck. The slightest thing would set Rose off, and she would lash out violently: not just hitting and slapping but stabbing and strangling her children. She also hit them with a novelty giant wooden spoon. 'My nose is on a slant because of the amount of times she broke it,' Barry told me. 'She would use [the spoon] as a baseball bat to beat us. I've got massive scars on the back of my head from the amount of times she split my head open with it. She broke my arm, all sorta stuff. She had intense enjoyment in beating the s**t out of me… ' Sadly, these were Barry's earliest memories. He said: 'She was just as sick as him. Her moods didn't change. She used to hit us even on Christmas Day. She used to smack you straight in the mouth.' One Christmas, Barry made the mistake of not liking Mum's brussel sprouts. 'I put them in a tissue and then hid them in the back of a chair,' he said. Days later Rose found them, rotting away. 'She put them on the table, and she made me eat them,' he added. '[Then] she put her hand over my mouth and made me swallow my own sick. That's the sort of s**t I had growing up. I don't remember any present opening.' Childhood at Cromwell Street was simply joyless. Rose sent her girls to school with short hair, like boys, wearing boys' shoes because they lasted longer. She made her daughters clean their hair with washing-up liquid rather than shampoo and she didn't allow the purchase of deodorant, which the girls were teased about. The West boys went to school in their sisters' hand-me-downs, allowing their hair to grow long like girls. Many developed squints and speech defects, which can be indications of child abuse. 'When we was young, we all had speech impediments,' says Barry, 'I got my face punched in every day I went to school….[I was] scared to go to school, scared to go home.' It wasn't just Rose waiting for him at home. It was also his father. The children once clubbed together to buy him a £12 Zippo lighter for Father's Day. They even got it inscribed. 'He threw it across the room,' Barry recalled. 'That was the kind of man he was.' That wasn't the half of it. West spoke about sex constantly in front of the kids, about wanting to take his daughters' virginity, about the family tradition of incest, even sex with animals. His stated ambition – the very idea is insane – was to see Rose mounted by a bull. '[Dad] was such a disgusting man, he was vile,' Barry told me. Fred wanted to deflower his daughters, and Barry claimed he was forced into sexual situations with his mother at just 'eight or nine'. The children often had to take phone bookings for 'Mandy', their mum's alias when she was working as a prostitute. Barry started being offered up to clients as an extra, as such. According to him, one evening, Rose came downstairs in her nightdress and told Barry to follow her to her room. 'She said, 'There's a man in here and I want you to do exactly what he tells you to do, no matter what',' recalled Barry. '[I] was just confused. I didn't know what she was talking about. I walk in and there was a giant man in front of me.' The regular raped Barry. This was just the start. His abuser continued to visit the house to molest him and have sex with Rose. The mum had a dedicated pair of underwear for each regular, kept in separate labelled jars. West also insisted she kept all used contraceptives in order to "artificially inseminate' their children. Barry claimed they were even made to watch homemade porn featuring their mother. It was sometimes said within the family that Barry may not have been West's child at all, but the product of the incestuous relationship between Rose and her father, Bill Letts. Bill had allegedly been abusing Rose since she was a girl and, according to notes made in prison by West, was a regular visitor to Cromwell Street. West alleged one of his daughters once came downstairs complaining: 'Grampy [is] going to sleep with me.' According to West, Rose said: 'He is not going to eat you, he is only going to f**k you. You'll probably love it.' (Rose routinely denies all wrongdoing even after her murder convictions). Alongside the beatings and the abuse, young women were being brought to the house where they were attacked, murdered, often dismembered by West (in the family bathroom). All were found with fingers, toes and other body parts missing, leading one psychologist to suggest there could have been a cannibalistic element to the killings. The eldest surviving child Anna-Marie was coming up for nine when 19-year-old Lynda Gough was killed in 1973, the first of the nine Cromwell Street murders. Eight more women, some of them lodgers, disappeared over the next six years. The bodies of West's first wife Rena, pregnant mistress Anne McFall and stepdaughter Charmaine were buried elsewhere. Most of the children maintained they had no idea what was going on. Years later, however, one child (whom I won't identify) claimed that there were days when they were locked in a cupboard under the stairs while they heard shouting and screaming. When they came out they saw fresh concrete had been poured in the cellar. 'Why didn't we all run away?' Barry, who went on to suffer a long battle of psychological issues, asked me. 'I suppose that's the hold he had, the power. My dad was like God. You couldn't beat him. You couldn't run away. He would find you.' Barry contemplated killing his father to end their misery. "I tried stabbing him when I was eleven with a screwdriver. He just laughed at me," he claimed. The younger siblings did get some revenge on Rose, however. Just before they were taken into care during the police investigation, Barry claimed Rose came at them with the wooden spoon and they all joined forces to turn on her. "I remember all my sisters jumping on top [of her], and we all sort of stood up [to her] and she was tired," he claimed. "She was knackered. She hit us until [she] couldn't hit us anymore. And that's when she broke down. And I saw the weakness of her, and she was crying her eyes out..." On the whole however, the children knew not to step out of line - or break the West code of silence. Barry's older sister Heather was their warning. She vanished aged 16 in 1987 after saying she wanted to leave home. The children were told she'd moved away and cut contact, But it became a family 'joke': if you crossed Fred and Rose, you'd end up like Heather - under the patio, three paving stones up and nine across. Barry later said: 'That was what was going to happen to all of us when we got old enough. If we didn't turn out like him, we was against him. And if we was against him, we would have to go in the garden – under the patio. He made us understand that.' When that 'joke' reached the ears of police, the diggers moved in. And the Wests' decades of debasement would stay buried no more….
