Disgraced police officer jailed for having sex with three women while on duty

UK:   A police officer who has sex with three women while he was on duty has been jailed.

PC Darren Heath, 45, wore his uniform to visit “vulnerable” victims and turned off his radio during sex.

The father-of-two bedded one woman minutes after telling a family their loved one had been killed in a car crash.

He persuaded another victim to have an abortion after he threatened to kill himself when she became pregnant with twins.

Judge Neil Ford QC, Recorder of Bristol, said: “You used your position as a police officer to obtain sexual gratification from women you met in the course of your duties.

“Your grossly inappropriate behaviour mainly took place when you were on duty. You betrayed your force and the women who relied upon you for your assistance.”

Heath was jailed for three years and nine months after admitting five charges of misconduct in public office.

The court heard how he met his first victim in July 2002 after she was arrested for drink driving.

They began a sexual relationship which ended when she was banned from driving.

Six years later, Heath was sitting in a police car when a woman told him a man was unconscious in the street.

He got the woman’s phone number and went to her home four days later.

Heath stripped from his uniform and asked: “Are we going to bed then?”

He visited his victim up to four times a week while on duty.

Phone records showed he called the woman while at the scene of a fatal car crash.

Prosecutor Sarah Regan told Bristol crown court: “Having been to deliver the news to the family of the deceased, he went to her home.

"He had the paperwork from the incident with him and they had sex before he returned to work.”

His next victim called police after her ex-partner began stalking her and attacked her teenage daughter.

Heath visited the woman dozens of times but refused to attend her ex-partner’s house, saying “the police work in strange ways”.

The woman refused to open the door to Heath after he sent her a text message saying: “It wasn’t coffee I wanted, it is your body”.

In September 2012, Heath met another woman after arranging a restorative justice programme for her son.

He regularly visited her and she refused his advances but had sex with him during another visit.

The prosecutor said: “He had his uniform on and turned his radio off when they had sex.”

The court heard Heath, from Taynton, Gloucester, has a partner of five years and two children.

He was arrested last year and suspended on full pay after one of his victims complained to police.

Defence lawyer Ed Burgess said: “His reputation is in tatters, his career is over and his life is in pieces.”

Det Insp Giulia Maronga, senior investigating officer at Gloucestershire Police’s anti-corruption unit, said: “Darren Heath is a manipulating, calculating and controlling individual who took advantage of his position by targeting vulnerable women who he met through his job and subsequently abusing the trust his position gave.

“His behaviour and actions are shameful and is completely at odds with what is expected of our officers.”