The 65-year-old former police chief is accused of raping a 14-year-old girl while he was with another victim whom he had indecently assaulted, the court said

The former head of Britain’s police watchdog is accused of raping a 14-year-old girl while he was with another victim whom he had indecently assaulted, a court heard yesterday.

Michael Lockwood was Director General of the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) until 2022, when he was accused of abusing two 14-year-old girls. He denies all allegations.

The 65-year-old is said to have offered a “naive” teenager a ride in his Ford Capri before raping her in the storeroom of a leisure centre near Hull, where he worked as a lifeguard at the age of 26.

Yesterday, an ex-girlfriend who was in a relationship with Lockwood at the time of the alleged assault stated that she too had been the victim of sexual abuse at the age of 14.

The alleged victim stated that in 1979 or 1980, when she was 14 years old, Lockwood dragged her into a bathroom stall and touched her breasts.

Jurors heard that it was “common knowledge” among their fellow lifeguards, and they even sang about being “locked in the toilet” together at the leisure center.

Lockwood was aware of her age and even helped her with her math homework before she took her final exams, she claimed. He allegedly indecently assaulted her eight times when she was 14 or 15, including in his mother’s car.

The couple later began a sexual relationship when she was 16 and he was 22.

But then she found out that he was engaged to someone else.

Kentucky defense attorney Sarah Elliott asked the alleged victim how she felt when she learned in 2022 that Lockwood had been charged with raping a 14-year-old girl in the 1980s.

Ms Elliott asked: “The thought that there might be someone else when you thought you were in a committed relationship with him must have worried you?”

The woman, whose identity cannot be disclosed for legal reasons, replied: “I was worried.”

According to the Old Bailey, the woman had made notes about Lockwood in her school notebook, in which she wrote that she did not like “the way he treats me” and “he lies”.

She also wrote that what she liked most about Lockwood was his “personality,” his “butt,” and his “hairy chest,” but she didn’t like that he “never goes anywhere.” She later told police, “There was some grooming involved.”

Jurors heard that Lockwood began working at the leisure centre while at university before building a “distinguished” career in local government and later becoming head of the Police Complaints Authority for England and Wales.

He was still working there part-time when, in the mid-1980s, while serving as chief auditor at Humberside County Council, he was alleged to have raped another 14-year-old girl.

In total, Lockwood is accused of three rapes and 14 sexual assaults on two girls between 1979 and 1986. When questioned by police, Lockwood admitted to having had sexual intercourse with his ex-girlfriend, but insisted that the relationship did not begin until he was 16 years old.

He denied raping the other girl and said he could not remember meeting her, but suggested she may have been “obsessed” with him.

Lockwood, a married father of two, said: “I know for a fact that I never had sexual intercourse with anyone at the leisure centre.”

“I don’t remember there being a pantry downstairs. Maybe there was, but I would never have risked my career or my job by having sex with anyone in a public place.”

The process continues.