Policeman who raped victim in his lunch break gets 11 years in jail
A POLICE officer who raped a woman in her home during his lunch break before returning to work has been jailed for 11 years.
Derek Seekings, 66, a Surrey Police custody sergeant who is now retired, raped the same woman on a second occasion and when she tried to resist he replied: ‘Just let me finish.’
He was jailed yesterday at Lewes Crown Court after being found guilty of two counts of rape between 1994 and 2000.
Sentencing him, Judge Stephen Mooney said he had caused his victim severe psychological harm and had betrayed the public’s trust in the police.
In a statement read to the court, the victim said that after his attacks ‘I contemplated suicide almost every day for many months’.
She added that she now had difficulty forming close relationships and could not be in a room without planning ways to escape if she had to.
At an earlier hearing at Brighton Crown Court, Jennifer Gray, prosecuting, said both rapes happened without warning during a six-year period.
During one lunch break Seekings, pictured, from Farnborough, Hampshire, went to the woman’s home where she was alone in an upstairs bedroom. He pushed her on to a bed and raped her.
The victim said: ‘He was wearing his uniform. He had sex with me. I didn’t want sex and I made that really clear. I didn’t move, I was very still.’
The court heard that to distract herself she began to recite her seven times table in her head.
She said after the attack ‘he got dressed again and he went back to work. It was blatant. It just happened and then he just left. I felt completely traumatised.’
The woman said on the second occasion she tried to push him off but he continued and told her: ‘Just let me finish.’
In her victim impact statement she said the fact that he had pleaded not guilty had been ‘devastating’ as it meant she had to go to court to give evidence.
Seekings, who left the force in 2005 and was arrested in 2018, was ordered to sign the sex offender register for life and barred from ever working with children.