Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
Officer sacked for groping colleague - but we can’t tell you his name
Identity of police constable who fondled boss at party kept secret
A Kent police officer has been sacked for groping a colleague at a work Christmas party but his identity has been kept a secret.
The constable was hauled before a disciplinary hearing after the woman complained he had fondled her breast during the bash at the Kent Showground in Maidstone.
A panel led by an independent chair ruled the officer’s behaviour amounted to gross misconduct and dismissed him without notice.
But this paper cannot name the PC as it was agreed to anonymise his identity in a 93-page report to protect the mental health of his mother, who was said to be on suicide watch.
The decision has allowed the officer to escape having his name on the public record for what the panel said “constituted a sexual assault”.
The incident
The hearing was told that in 2021 the officer - referred to only as PC M - attended a festive party with a number of other colleagues, including the victim, who was named as Ms A and senior to him.
The pair worked together and had previously exchanged friendly texts, but not of a sexual nature, when they were both single.
Five months before the Christmas party, Ms A had also invited PC M to her house for a cup of tea when he was working an evening shift, but he declined.
On the night of the Christmas
get-together, “unlimited alcohol” was put on for the group, with PC M at one point heard saying to colleagues: “I want to see [Ms A] drunk.”
Later in the evening the pair, who were both now in relationships, found themselves standing at the bar together in a marquee filled with other police officers and members of the public.
Ms A says she was unsettled by PC M’s proximity to her and was made to “feel even more uncomfortable” when he placed his hand on her hip.
She said she felt PC M, who says they discussed her previous text inviting him to her home, “was trying to almost have an intimate moment with her but she was not feeling the same way towards him”. She started talking about their new partners in an attempt to create a boundary, but PC M seemed to lean closer to her, the panel heard.
Ms A says she then lent forward and gave PC M a “peck” on the lips “so she could then
pull away and create more space between them”
At this point PC M raised his hand up the side of her body and onto a part of her torso exposed by a cut-out in her dress.
Ms A says he put his hand beneath her dress and onto her breast, brushing her nipple with his thumb “for a few seconds”.
PC M would later give his version of events in a statement, claiming: “During this time our faces were close together and we were looking into each other’s eyes.
“We then briefly kissed. I had moved my hand up higher on her side and I am relatively certain my thumb did caress her breast through an opening in the dress, although I cannot be sure that I touched her nipple.” Following the incident, Ms A returned to the dance floor. She was later picked up by her boyfriend, and told him about the incident, as well as reporting it to a senior officer on the same night.