Woman denies ‘bragging’ about sex with another lifeguard

A woman accusing the former head of Britain’s police watchdog of abusing her when he worked at a sports centre denied she ‘bragged’ about having sex with another lifeguard.

Michael Lockwood, 65, is said to have assaulted two 14-year-old girls at the sports venue in Hull, east Yorkshire, between 1979 and 1986.

He stood down as director general of the Independent Office for Police Conduct in December 2022.

Lockwood denies three counts of rape and six counts of indecent assault between 1985 and 1986.

He also denies eight counts of indecent assault on a second girl between 1979 and 1981.

Lockwood was in his twenties when he touched the first girl in the toilet at the sports centre and in his car before raping her on the floor of a storeroom, jurors have heard.

In the early 80s he was studying at Hull University and by the mid-eighties was working as a senior auditor at Humberside County Council while still working part-time in the leisure centre.

Lockwood admits having sex with one of the girls – but not until she was 16.

Giving evidence today, the victim allegedly assaulted during the mid-Eighties, who is now in her 50s, said she came forward after a conversation with someone else.

She said: ‘I was feeling emotionally vulnerable. I knew at some point I would need to deal with this. I knew it would be opening a can of worms.’

Defence barrister Sarah Elliott, KC, suggested she was triggered to report Lockwood by seeing him on the news.

The woman replied: ‘No, that’s not correct. I may have described it as triggering seeing him but it was not the trigger event.’

Ms Elliott suggested the alleged victim maybe mistaken in thinking it was Lockwood was she had sex with.

Ms Elliott said: ‘I want to suggest to you the sequence of events may have been this: You see Michael Lockwood on the news because he had a public position and he is in the news a lot and he is a face you recognised because he did work at (the leisure centre) 40 years ago and it’s after that you Google and decide he is the person you say you had sex with.’

‘No, that’s not how it happened at all,’ the woman replied.

Ms Elliott said: ‘Once you had had your trigger you undertook quite a lot of research about Michael Lockwood.’

The woman said: ‘I was trying to establish it was him. I did not want to make a mistake.

‘I had never heard of the IOPC before the trigger event.

‘Once you have heard of the IOPC it is in the media quite a lot. People said to me ‘Are you sure it’s him? Are you sure it’s him?’… I said ‘Yes, it’s definitely him.’

Another girl who went to the leisure centre had been ‘obsessed’ with Lockwood and another lifeguard, the court heard.

The witness agreed the other girl had a ‘thing’ for Lockwood and that she had made a photo album of him at running events and sports competitions.

Ms Elliott suggested that part of the fun of going to the leisure centre was ‘looking at boys, like teenage girls like to do.’

The witness was asked about a ‘crush’ she had on another lifeguard at the same leisure centre in the early 1980s.

She had a bracelet from Hull fair with his name on it but she denied describing him as her boyfriend.

The woman said that when she was 13 she had a lot of crushes including Simon Le Bon from the pop band Duran Duran.

She also denied a suggestion she had later ‘bragged’ that she had sex with a lifeguard.

She said: ‘I found the situation overwhelming. I did not know how to handle it.

‘Often when I mentioned things to people I would then regret disclosing. I did not know what was going on.’

Ms Elliott said: ‘Over the next few years you tell a number of people that you had a consensual sexual relationship with a lifeguard.’

The witness replied: ‘I probably described it as consensual because that’s how I thought of it.

‘It was only when I had children that I started to realise it probably was not my fault. The awareness was growing that it was abuse and it was not a consensual relationship.’

She denied that over the years she had ‘embellished’ her story about a lifeguard.

Ms Elliott said: ‘I suggest if you ever had any sexual activity in a store room it was not with Michael Lockwood.’

The woman said: ‘I only ever had sexual activity with Michael Lockwood.’

The woman denied the suggestion that if there was sexual activity at the leisure centre it was with one of the other lifeguards, such as her earlier crush.

Ms Elliott asked about comments the woman made about feeling sick at destroying Lockwood’s life because she could not get ‘closure’ in her own.

She said: ‘Was that you recognising you had wrongly accused Mr Lockwood?’

‘If something happened to you all those years ago I suggest it was not with Michael Lockwood and you had practically no contact with Michael Lockwood when you were at (the leisure centre).’

The woman replied: ‘That’s not true. He took me to the store room. We had sex.’

She said: ‘I recognised the impact it has had on his life, his job. I take no joy.

‘I could not get closure without reporting and it was something I had to do.

‘What happened back then were his choices, they were not mine.’

Lockwood accepts having a relationship but claims it did not start until she was 16.

The married father-of-two took up the £190,000 IOPC post in January 2018.

He stepped down as news of the investigation into him was made public.

He was born in Newcastle in 1959 and went to Hull University between 1978 and 1981 where he completed a degree in Geography and History.

He joined the National Audit Office as a trainee and moved around the country, then began working as working as an auditor for Humberside Council in the 1980s.

Lockwood, of Epsom, Surrey, denies 14 counts of indecent assault and three of rape.

The trial continues.
ends