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Rapist policeman who attacked 30 women during five-year reign is finally behind bars
By Paul Sims
Last updated at 10:25 PM on 24th November 2010
Stephen Mitchell: He was arrested for sex offences a year before joining the police but managed to slip through the net
A rapist policeman who attacked up to 30 women during a five-year reign of terror was finally behind bars last night. PC Stephen Mitchell, 42, assaulted drug addicts in the cells and interview rooms of a city-centre police station, knowing that if they complained they were unlikely to be believed. One of them, a 19-year-old drug addict when he first struck, estimated she had been abused 100 times as he kept track of her using the police computer.
Yet his colleagues ignored a series of warnings about his behaviour – some of them from his own wife. They were unaware that he had already stood trial for sex offences before he was recruited to the force. He was eventually sacked in 2007 for having ‘consensual’ sex with one of his victims, only to be reinstated on appeal eight months later.
And when he was finally stopped, a senior detective with Northumbria Police offered him ‘a get out of jail free card’ if he agreed to resign. He refused, opting to take his chances in court. Mitchell – a tall, muscular former soldier – was found guilty of two rapes, three indecent assaults and six charges of misconduct in a public office, involving a total of seven women.
He was cleared of three further rape charges, two indecent assaults and counts of misconduct involving another nine women. But police suspect he attacked at least a further 14. Mitchell showed no emotion yesterday as the jury of six men and six women found him guilty at the end of a five-week trial at Newcastle Crown Court.
Mr Justice Wilkie adjourned sentencing until January 11 but warned him he was considering an indeterminate jail term. Brought up in a Glasgow tower block, Mitchell joined the 1st Battalion Queen’s Own Highlanders in 1990 and a year later allegedly attempted to rape two male soldiers and sexually assault a third.
HE STALKED ME USING THE POLICE COMPUTER
The ordeal of Mitchell’s most frequent victim began in 1999 when she was caught with a friend trying to cash stolen cheques in Marks and Spencer.
‘The first thing that struck me as odd was that he told my friend to **** off,’ the 30-year-old graduate said yesterday.
‘I was then handcuffed and taken in the back of a van with Mitchell. In my pocket I had an eighth of an ounce of heroin. I wasn’t dealing. I just had a massive habit, but I was worried I would be done for dealing. 'When I got to the police station, I was put in a cell but Mitchell came in and gave me the heroin back. It was then that I realised he must be dodgy. Later, we were in an interview room – just me and him. He kept telling me not to get a solicitor, to just trust him.
‘He kept saying, “You help me and I’ll help you. You’ll never see me again”. Mitchell made her perform a sex act on him. There was no CCTV within the police station and without any proof it would simply have been her word against his. A year later Mitchell re-arrested her and took her to a field where he indecently assaulted her in the dark.
He then began turning up at her house and finding reasons to arrest her and let her off with a caution – in return for sexual favours. He would also take her for a drive in his patrol car before forcing her to carry out sex acts on him. ‘He kept telling me I was disgusting and he was doing me a favour because no other man would have me,’ she said. When she tried to escape by moving house, Mitchell traced her through the police computer.
And when she began to turn her life around and started studying for a degree he blackmailed her, threatening to arrest her for new offences unless she submitted to his demands. He forced her to give him the keys to her flat and in 2003 he raped her. ‘He put my arms behind my back and handcuffed me,’ she said. ‘He pulled my shoulders back so hard, it felt like they were dislocated.’
Military police questioned him but the case went no further after he claimed that it was nothing more than ‘horseplay’. In 1994 he quit the Army and moved to the North East to be with his girlfriend, Julie Arnold, a penfriend whom he married a year later. In 1997, following a complaint from one of the alleged victims in the Army sex case, he stood trial in Edinburgh only for it to collapse when two witnesses refused to give evidence.
Even so, the allegations alone should have been enough to end his police career before it had begun – but thanks to an extraordinary oversight, details were not recorded on the police intelligence database. If they had been, it is almost certain there would have been enough doubt about his character to stop his recruitment by the Northumbria force. The following year he started work at Pilgrim Street police station in central Newcastle.
‘One day, I received a phone call from a female police officer,’ said his ex-wife Julie Vacher, 45, who has since remarried. ‘She told me he had made advances towards her and he had been accused of approaching a 17-year-old girl with a mental age of 12. I challenged him but he would just keep telling me, “Don’t be stupid. You’re the only one for me”.’ She finally left him in 2005 and began divorce proceedings before telling his superiors about his past.
In response, Mitchell – whose father was murdered in 2001 – hacked into the police national computer to carry out checks on his ex-wife and her new partner. He was disciplined and fined three days’ wages but not sacked until 2007 when he admitted having ‘consensual’ sex with one of his victims. Eight months later on appeal he was reinstated to the rank of PC and returned to front-line duties. Officers continued to investigate him and Mitchell, who also ran a massage
business called Helping Hands, was suspended in March 2009 and eventually charged in January with attacking 16 women. Detectives believed there were another 14 victims whose evidence was not strong enough to bring to court. His ex-wife is among those demanding to know why he was not stopped earlier. ‘How the hell did he join the force in the first place and, worse still, how did they let him rejoin in 2008?’ asked Mrs Vacher. ‘If they had done their job properly six years ago, when I warned them, they could have saved all these women so much suffering.’
