This rapist policeman was given life after attacking up to 30 women. Now, outrageously, he’s free after seven years. Here his victims vent their fury — and terror he’ll strike again
‘He was excited at the power that he had over me’
‘It’s a slap in the face for all of us who testified’
FOR five years, police officer Stephen Mitchell ruthlessly abused his position for his own perverted sexual gratification. He chose his victims carefully: drug addicts — desperate women driven to prostitution and petty theft to fund their habits.
Who’d believe them if they complained? Who’d take their word over his?
Cowed, intimidated and vulnerable, they succumbed to his repeated sexual assaults and violent rapes. ‘I am the law,’ he’d goad them. ‘I can do anything I want.’
And he could . . . until the day one brave victim spoke out. Her accusation prompted 30 other victims to come forward and make complaints against Mitchell, laying bare the full extent of his depravity.
He was found guilty at Newcastle Crown Court in 2010 of rape, indecent assault and misconduct in a public office and was given two life sentences — a sentence that should have meant at least 15 years in jail. At the time, the judge, Mr Justice Wilkie, told Mitchell he was a ‘ruthless sexual predator’ who had targeted those who were ‘downtrodden’ and living in ‘chaotic desperation’.
He warned: ‘I am satisfied it is likely if you were at large, even though you would not hold a position of authority such as being a police officer, you would remain a danger to women for an indefinite time.’
Strong words indeed, and his victims breathed a collective sigh of relief in the belief he was to spend many years behind bars. Or so they thought . . . It is difficult to imagine their horror after photographs of Mitchell, now 50, appeared in a Sunday newspaper showing the tall, baldheaded, muscular, former soldier out enjoying a bike ride on a summer’s day. He was freed on parole after serving only seven years, and is living with his 75-year-old widowed mother at her home in Mosspark, Glasgow.
During Mitchell’s five-week trial, he showed no remorse and derided his victims as ‘liars’. Yet despite his complete refusal to admit to his crimes, the warnings of the judge and the psychiatrists, he is now a free man.
The decision to release him came just months before the national outcry over the decision to grant parole to black cab rapist John Worboys in November. Warboys had served just eight years for one rape, five sexual assaults, one attempted assault and 12 drugging charges, and police still believe he was responsible for 100 crimes between 2002 and 2008.
Such was the fury over his imminent release, however, the decision was overturned by the High Court and he remains behind bars.
MPs and victims have demanded a similar inquiry into Stephen Mitchell’s case.
Yvette Cooper, chair of the Commons Home Affairs Committee, called for an urgent update from Justice Secretary David Gauke, saying: ‘This case is disturbing and incomprehensible. For someone who has committed such appalling crimes and been told they may not be released for many years, if ever, to then be released on parole after only seven- and- a- half years is just impossible to understand.’
Meanwhile, the Violence Against Women Coalition has demanded an ‘urgent review of how rape and sexual violence is handled by the justice system’ and Rape Crisis England and Wales has described the case as ‘deeply disturbing’.
Retired dressmaker Karen, 60, whose name we’ve changed to protect her identity, is one of those adding her voice to the clamour to get Mitchell back behind bars.
It was she who first reported him to police 12 years ago, and she is now terrified he’ll seek revenge.
The grandmother was 48 in 2006 when she was arrested by Mitchell after she stole suncream and hair dye from Superdrug in Newcastle.
At the time, Karen was suffering from breast cancer and her treatment had left her underweight. This, she believes, is why Mitchell mistook her for an addict — just the sort of woman he liked to target.
‘I was taken to the station and he led me down a dark passage,’ she says. ‘I remember thinking: “This is odd.” He then took me to a room and sat me in a chair.
‘He stood over me and pulled my hair hard and then it happened. I could see how excited he was getting by the power he had over me; he was loving the control and dominance.
‘I was terrified. I told him I was very unwell with cancer but he didn’t care. I don’t know why I stole those things. It was a moment of madness and what happened afterwards has wrecked my life — it’s like a nightmare I can’t wake up from.’
She says Mitchell let her go after she promised not to tell anyone, but over the next two weeks, he started to turn up at her home and that of her daughter, who was in her 20s. Thankfully, neither of them was in.
‘I wasn’t sure what to do at first as he was a police officer and it was my word against his, but when he went to my daughter’s house, I thought: “No, I’m not having this. He could do the same to her.” So I reported him.’
Officers at Newcastle Pilgrim Street Station, where Mitchell was based, started to investigate by contacting other women he had arrested. They quickly learned there were many others with similar stories of abuse.
Although he was acquitted of attacking Karen by the jury, she fears he will come after her because she was the one who first reported him. ‘I just can’t believe he’s been released so soon, and I am petrified. He knows it was me who made the first complaint. He’s not just capable of rape — he’s capable of murder.
‘My ordeal lasted 20 minutes and in that time I could see how much he lost control. He was like a man possessed. And now he has nothing to lose. He’s lost his job, home . . . everything.’
One of the women who suffered the most at his hands is Sarah, who was a heroin addict in her early 20s when she was arrested for trying to cash stolen cheques in 1999.
When her bag was searched, a quantity of heroin was found, which Mitchell returned to her in her cell before forcing her to perform a sex act on him.
This was the beginning of four years of horrific sexual abuse for Sarah, which saw Mitchell invent reasons to repeatedly arrest her, tracking her down using the police computer system whenever she moved to try to escape him.
He assaulted her more than 100 times, humiliating her by saying it was futile to complain because ‘no one would believe a junkie’.
Afraid of losing his control over her, he tried to keep her hooked on heroin by supplying her, even picking her up from a rehab centre to give it to her. Her abuse culminated in a brutal rape in her home.
‘He put my arms behind my back and handcuffed me,’ she says. ‘He pulled my shoulders back so hard, it felt like they were dislocated.’
Like Karen, she is astounded at Mitchell’s release and says the Parole Board must be held to account.
‘This is a slap in the face for every one of us who had the courage to testify, and it will discourage future victims from doing so.
‘I believe he is still a danger to women and always will be.’
Sarah kicked her drug habit and studied for a master’s degree. She has managed to rebuild her life and is now a teacher.
‘Given his occupation as a member of the Armed Forces and police officer, he knew how to work the system,’ she says. ‘He is a highly manipulative narcissist who is skilled at making people bend to his will.
‘I would have expected a lot more from the Parole Board. The way they make their decisions should be looked at closely.
‘It should be obvious to anyone that it is impossible for someone to change their entire belief system and personality in seven years.
‘They have sent out a clear message to the victims of Stephen Mitchell: “We do not consider that you are worthy of justice.” ’
Looking into Mitchell’s background, however, one wonders how he was ever allowed to serve as a police officer in the first place.
The only son of James Mitchell, a car assembly line factory worker, and his wife, Anne, he grew up in a Glasgow tower block, before enlisting in the Army and joining the 1st Battalion Queen’s Own Highlanders at the age of 20.
Within a year, he had been accused of attempting to rape two young male soldiers and sexually assaulting a third.
Military police questioned him, but the case went no further after Mitchell claimed it had been nothing more than ‘horseplay’.
In 1994, he quit the Army and moved to the North-East of England to be with his girlfriend, Julie Vacher, a penfriend he married a year later.
The couple had a daughter, born in 1995, and Mitchell started to work as a security guard and health care
assistant at Newcastle’s Royal Victoria Infirmary. But in 1997, following a complaint from one of the alleged victims in the Army sex case, he was put on trial in Edinburgh, only for it to collapse when two witnesses refused to give evidence.
Yet Mitchell was accepted as an officer with the Northumbria force a year later and posted to Newcastle. Five months after he had completed his training, he assaulted his first victim.
Months later, a terrible event in his personal life seemed to increase his appetite for sadism and violence: his 72-year-old father was beaten to death by a neighbour.
Around this time, a 25-year-old heroin addict became one of Mitchell’s victims. He’d cruelly promised to help reunite her with her children, but instead raped her in his police car in a lay-by.
Giving evidence at his trial, she told how she had fought to get out of the car, but was unable to, and how he held his hand over her mouth to stifle her screams.
Mitchell’s wife, Julie, also started to have concerns about his behaviour. In a previous interview, she told of how he became ‘more controlling and abusive’ following his father’s murder, and she warned senior detectives — also telling them about his Army rape trial from 1997.
Tragically for his victims, though, her warning went unheeded. Despite earning the nickname ‘pervy Steve’ from colleagues, Mitchell’s monstrous behaviour continued unchecked.
The only rap on the knuckles came after his marriage broke up in 2007, and he was caught using the force’s computer to try to find out information about Julie and her new partner, for which he was fined three days’ wages.
More seriously, later that year a colleague reported him for having what he claimed was ‘consensual’ sex with a drunk woman who’d just been arrested. Mitchell was sacked, yet reinstated to his job on appeal eight months later.
Shockingly, before he went to trial, a senior detective with Northumbria Police offered him ‘a get out of jail free card’ if he agreed to resign, jurors were told.
Mitchell refused, opting to take his chances in court. His victims gave evidence from behind a screen, but were branded liars and fantastists by his defence. Many of the women said their experience of cross- examination was like being assaulted all over again.
As Sarah says: ‘It was absolute hell to re-live very publicly the things he did. But we all did it because we believed every woman would be safer with him in prison.
‘And after he had been locked up, I slept well for the first time in many years.’
Mitchell was found guilty of two charges of rape and three of indecent assault against 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 women.
This week, his ex-wife Julie, 52, said she was shocked to hear he had been released. Their daughter, who doesn’t want to be named, said it was ‘an insult to the victims’.
She added: ‘I have been around him enough to know he can manipulate people; he has hurt people.
‘I think he should be back inside. He should be somewhere he can’t hurt people, because outside, in the public, he will do so. I have had first-hand experience of his abuse. He’s not human in my eyes.’
The Parole Board has defended the decision to release Mitchell, adding: ‘The panel will have looked at the original evidence and any evidence of behaviour change.
‘We do that with great care, and public safety is our priority.’
Yet for Emma, who was assaulted by Mitchell after she was arrested for shoplifting when she was 21, she says this is an insult. Now a mother-of-two and a florist, at the time she was hooked on heroin and at the mercy of his demands for sexual favours in return for being ‘let off’ crimes.
She received a letter from the Probation Service, warning that his release was imminent, but she only learned he was out after seeing the story in a newspaper.
‘He hasn’t done his time,’ she says, speaking from her flat in Newcastle. ‘I don’t believe he could be rehabilitated in that time. I feel it’s a crime you can’t be rehabilitated from. He’s never shown any remorse or admitted his guilt.’
When he was finally jailed, she says: ‘My feeling was that everything I’d been through had been worthwhile because it would be a long time before he’d see the light of day. Where is the justice?’
THE victims’ names have been changed to protect their identities.
‘Every woman would be safer with him in jail’