Former police watchdog chief on trial for three counts of rape and 14 counts of sexual assault of girls | UK | News

The former head of the police supervisory authority is said to have sexually abused two 14-year-old girls between 1979 and 1986, a court was told.

Michael Lockwood, 65, was Director General of the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) from 2017 to 2022.

Lockwood is accused of committing three rapes and 14 sexual assaults against two girls between 1979 and 1986.

The married father of two children denies all allegations.

The Old Bailey was told by a woman who had an affair with him at the age of 14 and later became his girlfriend while he was working as a lifeguard at a leisure centre near Hull.

She said Lockwood took her into a bathroom stall to touch her breasts in 1979 or 1980, when she was 14, and that indecent behavior occurred eight times when she was 14 or 15.

The court was told that his act was even widely known among the staff, who sang about being “locked in the toilet.”

Lockwood even came to her house to help her with her homework before exams, she said.

The court was told they had sex after she was 16, but he was 22.

The court heard that the woman wrote about Lockwood in a school notebook at the time, saying she did not like the way he treated her, that he lied and never went anywhere.

She also said she liked his “personality, his butt and his hairy chest.”

Lockwood worked at the leisure centre whilst studying before embarking on a career in local government, taking up his post at the Police Inspectorate in October 2017 after serving as chief executive of Harrow Council.

The court heard that he continued to work part-time at the leisure centre after joining the local government.

Lockwood is also accused of offering another teenager a lift in a Ford Capri before she was raped in a storage unit at age 26 in the mid-1980s.

At this time he was also chief auditor at Humberside County Council.

When questioned by police, Lockwood admitted to having sexual intercourse with the first alleged victim, who later became his girlfriend, but insisted that the relationship did not begin until he was 16 years old.

He denied raping the other girl and said he could not remember meeting her, but suggested that she may have been obsessed with him.

Lockwood told the court: “I know for a fact that I never had sexual intercourse with anyone at the leisure centre.”

“I don’t remember there being a pantry downstairs. Maybe there was, but I would never have risked my career or my job by having sex with anyone in a public place.”

The process continues.