CHARGED | 

Revealed: Cop accused of accessing PSNI child sex and rape files for ‘sexual satisfaction’

However, he wasn’t the only serving police officer to be listed to appear in a criminal court on Thursday

Steven Moore and Paul HigginsSunday World

11th August 2022

This is the serving cop accused of accessing PSNI child sex and rape files for his own benefit or “sexual satisfaction”.

Constable William Mallett, with an address c/o Lisburn PSNI station, didn’t appear at Lisburn Magistrates’ Court on Thursday but is charged with a single offence of misconduct in public office on dates between 19 September 2019 and 18 December 2020.

However, he wasn’t the only serving police officer to be listed to appear in a criminal court on Thursday as we can reveal SIX PSNI officers all had hearings for an array of alleged offences.

It comes just weeks after the PSNI revealed they themselves had dismissed 11 police officers amid claims of over 130 misconduct cases throughout the force.

And those figures emerged following allegations that PSNI officers were involved in sharing images of a suicide victim’s body online.

The charge against Constable William Mallett states that between a stated period of 15 months, “Being a Police Officer, acting as such, wilfully misconducted yourself to such a degree as to amount to an abuse of the public’s trust in you, in that you accessed certain occurrences and other such records on the Police Computer System which were linked to incidents of a sexual nature, including those variously reported as rape, sexual assault, sexual exploitation, child sexual exploitation, child abuse and harassment of a paedophile.”

It further states Mallett did this, “for you own benefit or sexual satisfaction, without reasonable excuse or justification, knowing that it was wrong for you to access such occurrences and other such records contrary to Common Law.”

The case had been scheduled for a Preliminary Enquiry on Thursday, which would have seen the case elevated to the Crown Court, but following a defence application, it was adjourned for two weeks to 18 August.

Before his case Mr Mallett confirmed to the Sunday World he had been suspended from his job as a police officer.

However, Constable Mallett was just one of several officers to be listed to appear in court on the same day.

On Thursday a total of six police officers, including two whistle-blowers who told a BBC Spotlight investigation about their colleagues exchanging sexist and racist messages, were charged with a variety of offences.

That case was put back for two weeks but will eventually end up in the Crown Court.

While William Mallett was the only officer charged in Lisburn, five Coleraine officers appeared on the list for their local court.

Three were jointly charged with unlawfully obtaining or disclosing personal data on 24 January 2019.

The three, former temporary chief inspector Donna Marie-Anne Bowden (50), Const. John O’Connor (45) and 35-year-old Linsey McLaughlin are all alleged to have taken a still image from Tesco CCTV system “without the consent of the data controller.”

Earlier this year in a BBC Spotlight programme, Bowden and O’Connor exposed alleged performance failings in the Causeway Coast and Glens policing district in early 2020, at the start of the Covid pandemic.

O’Connor and temporary Ch Insp Bowden initially uncovered evidence of slack behaviour among one group of officers.

“Domestics weren’t being attended to for an hour and a half,” said PC O’Connor, who has been a police officer for almost 18 years.

“I started to realise very, very quickly that people just weren’t attending calls at all.”

However when they raised their concerns, the officers found themselves moved to different duties and subject to internal complaints but it was while fighting those complaints they uncovered a WhatsApp group where 20 officers shared racist, sexist and misogynistic messages including texts and images which mocked Arabic and Islamic people and linked the success of senior female officers to the performance of sexual acts.

It is understood that three male officers are currently under investigation for gross misconduct as a result of the WhatsApp thread, and two female officers are being investigated for misconduct.

On Thursday, District Judge Peter Magill adjourned the case against Bowden, O’Connor and McLaughlin for two weeks “to fix a date for contest.”

The fourth cop in Coleraine was 41-year-old Howard Robinson who admitted an offence of excess speed on 9 March last year.

He will be sentenced on August 18 for his “high speed” in a 60 zone.

Lawyers for the last officer, 50-year-old Bob Blemmings, are set to write to the PPS about his breaching a traffic signal on 30 December last year, even though he has already “sent in a written plea of guilty.”

“Don’t worry about that,” said DJ Magill who adjourned the case to 1 September.

While all these officers are entitled to an assumption of innocence while their cases go through the court system, they come at a difficult time for the PSNI.

At the last Northern Ireland Policing Board meeting four weeks ago Deputy Chief Constable (DCC) Mark Hamilton revealed the force is investigating 130 cases of alleged gross misconduct among its own staff and officers and has dismissed 11 officers this year already.

He added that the PSNI has “dismissed more people in the first half of this year than we did in the entirety of last year.”

The claims of an officer sharing pictures of a suicide victim were made as part of a BBC Spotlight NI investigation and were described by Chief Constable Simon Byrne as “harrowing”.

DCC Hamilton said that those allegations, coupled with claims made by whistle-blowers about the usage of WhatsApp by officers in Coleraine, made for difficult reading.

“Sometimes it’s easy to say this is just one or two people and generally it is, but I think we can’t say that anymore,” he said.

“The issues of one officer, alleged issues I appreciate at the minute, they ripple across the entirety of the police service.

“We have dismissed more people in the first half of this year (11) than we did in the entirety of last year (seven).

“We have 13 panels at which people can be dismissed, although they have a range of sanctions, planned.

“We have a number of special case hearings planned.

“We have almost 130 cases of gross misconduct that we are investigating.”

Chief Constable Simon Byrne told the meeting they had sought advice from a professional standards expert within the PSNI about what they could expect in terms of the progression of misconduct claims.

“His advice to us is really because of the actions that we have been taking, when you look at the data, we’re going into a bell curve of a high number of cases, a more likely number of suspensions and more cases therefore on the system,” he said.

“His expectation, and probably to shape yours, is that this may continue for a while until people get the message that a range of things aren’t a part of a modern, progressive and inclusive police service.