WPC could get £25,000 payout from colleague who groped her
A SEX-PEST police inspector faces paying a female colleague up to £25,000 for groping her.
Paul Nightingale was also accused of drunkenly targeting four other women at a staff Christmas party.
The 40-year-old fondled PC Lisa Myers, 38, at the work night out during a 12month campaign of sexual harassment, which culminated in him sticking his hand down her top.
Mrs Myers, from Liverpool, quit British Transport Police last January and is seeking £25,000 damages from Nightingale for sexual harassment. A hearing today will decide the compensation he must pay her after a tribunal upheld her claim on Friday.
It emerged at the hearing that he had been accused of rape in 2002 by a woman who said he attacked her while he was a sergeant in Cambridgeshire. The force said yesterday that the allegation was ‘unsubstantiated’.
The tribunal into Mrs Myers’ claims was told that Nightingale faced a police misconduct hearing but quit before he could be disciplined. The force settled her claim against it for sex discrimination and victimisation for a sum thought to be around £50,000.
Mrs Myers told the Liverpool hearing how the father of two – then a sergeant acting as an inspector at Liverpool Lime Street station – groped her bottom at the Christmas party in 2015 and asked her to have sex in a car. A 24-year-old community support officer said she also had her bottom groped by Nightingale at the same event.