Uniformed policeman 'cuffed and raped heroin addict'

A former heroin addict told a court today how a blackmailing police officer cuffed her hands behind her back and then raped her over a settee in her home while still in his uniform.

Pc Stephen Mitchell kept her under his control for four years after he made her perform a sex act on him in a police station interview room once he had arrested her, Newcastle Crown Court heard.

The woman, a lesbian in her 30s and now a postgraduate after years of being clean of drugs, said the officer even gave her money when she was trying to quit heroin so she could buy the drug, telling her that attempting to quit would fail.

Mitchell, a 42-year-old Northumbria Police officer from Glasgow, denies five counts of rape, six indecent assaults and 15 counts of misconduct in a public office, said to have occurred between 1999 and 2006.

The witness, one of 16 complainants, said he raped her the last time she saw him in 2003.

She said she had asked him repeatedly to give her a video he claimed he had of CCTV footage of her fraudulently cashing a benefits cheque at a post office in Pennywell, Sunderland, some years before.

By this time, she had a job and her own flat and said she was terrified she could lose it all if the tape emerged.

Giving evidence from behind a screen, she described how Mitchell handcuffed her, claiming he was arresting her for the benefit fraud.

As she became hysterical, she told the jury he said he would "give me something to cry for" and raped her.

"He said he would teach me a lesson," she said.

"(That) it was my own fault. (That) I was a junkie, nobody would ever believe me."

She added: "I knew there was no way out of the situation, to stop the pain. I was hysterical."

Her ordeal began in 1999 when Mitchell arrested her for obtaining property by deception.

She was taken to Pilgrim Street Police Station, Newcastle, where he suggested that in return for him not charging her for certain offences, she would perform a sex act on him, the court heard.

The witness said she did not understand what he wanted her to do at first.

"I had never engaged in sexual activity with a male before," she said.

Afterwards, the court heard, Mitchell threatened to tell his victim's partner about what had happened, or even to arrest her lover.

"I was terrified of him because I knew what he was capable of. Actually I didn't, but I thought I did," she said.

Over the next years, she claimed Mitchell regularly called on her to perform a sex act on him in his car.

On one occasion, parked on a dirt track near Sunderland, they were seen by two women on horseback who, the witness said, shouted: "You are disgusting, move or we will call the police."

Mitchell helped her win a place at a drug rehabilitation centre, but she would have lost the place if she was charged with the post office fraud, she said.

"I always had so much to lose," she said. "Especially when I was trying to get into the rehab centre.

"I knew if I had charges (against me) they wouldn't take me. It was a vicious circle."

Mitchell took her out of the centre on one occasion and took her to buy heroin - despite her being clean of the drug, she claimed.

He gave her £25 and she bought a bag from a local dealer, later flushing it down the toilet, she said.

She claimed he undermined her attempt to kick heroin, saying: "You know in your heart of hearts, this is not going to work. You have tried before.

"In a nutshell, you are a failure."

The decision to throw the drugs away later was, she said, "probably the hardest thing I ever did in my life, definitely the most beneficial".

She said Mitchell always blackmailed her into performing sex acts.

"I had become more compliant because I knew what would happen if I hadn't," she said.

"It was always quite rough. I always ended up hurt.

"It was not what I wanted to do or that I found him attractive in any shape or form.

"It was because I didn't have a choice because of what I would lose."

She said when she moved into her own accommodation, he turned up at her home, despite her not giving him the address.

"It was my intention to disappear. There was a knock at the door... I can remember it specifically because my world just crumbled."

He took a set of keys and when she returned from work one night she found a knife planted in her pillow, she claimed.

The home she was so proud of became a "nightmare" and she used to sleep under the bed because she was petrified, she told the court.

The case continues.