Police officer jailed for 16 years for campaign of sexual abuse

A sadistic police officer who was recorded repeatedly raping a woman after she installed a sleep app on her iPhone was branded a ‘monster’ as he was jailed for 16 years today (Fri).

PC Michael Graham, 49, tied the victim up, slapped her and choked her during a campaign of physical and sexual abuse on his houseboat in Uxbridge, west London.

The Metropolitan Police officer also boasted that he would end up killing the woman while branding her a ‘slut’ and a ‘c**t’.

Sound recordings of two of his attacks were captured on the victim’s iPhone and were played to jurors during the Old Bailey trial.

Graham, a former marine who saw action in Yugoslavia, insisted that her repeated screams and shouts of ‘No’ were just part of their sexual fantasies and role-playing.

He was convicted of seven counts of rape and one count of sexual assault by a jury of six men and six women after trial at the Old Bailey.

Graham was cleared of two specimen counts of rape which each alleged he raped the complainant on at least 10 occasions.

Jailing Graham for 16 years, Judge Peter Rook said: ‘In my view this was a series of brutal rapes, these offences were committed against a woman who from the time of the first rape on Christmas Eve was terrified of you.

‘You threatened her all the time, on occasions telling her that you would kill her.

‘You were domineering and controlling, it seems you obtained sexual gratification from arguing with her, punishing her and committing violent non-consensual sexual acts against her.

‘It took extreme courage to report the matter to the police, no doubt you thought that you would be able to control her so that she would never do so.

‘She felt you could do what you wanted because no one would ever believe her – you’ve caused untold and continuing psychological damage.

‘She remains highly traumatised and finds it difficult to socialise.’

He was also barred from contacting the victim on his eventual release.

Graham abused the victim over a nine month period from 24 December 2013.

Jurors were told that Graham became increasingly violent and aggressive after giving up cigarettes and using the drug Champix.

The victim said she did not initially go to police because he told her: ‘I’m a police officer, I can do what I want, I’ll tell people you are mad.’

She said she finally decided to make a statement but in September 2014 after he made repeated threats to kill her.

The woman told officers: ‘I would just say “No I don’t like it. I don’t want you to hurt me.”

‘But he just did it anyway. He made threats if I didn’t do it. I was absolutely terrified of him.

‘I knew I had to leave because he is going to kill me next.’

The victim started using the iPhone sleep app to record Graham’s increasingly aggressive rants and captured two separate sex attacks.

Graham, who served in the borough of Hounslow, can be clearly heard slapping her as she cries out in pain and repeatedly tells him ‘no.’

When she tells him: ‘Don’t hurt me’, he replies: ‘I like hurting you.’

Later he says: ‘I am going to beat you to death in a minute I can see it coming.’

She is also recorded begging: ‘No please, please no’, followed by the sound of a slap.

Graham tells her: ‘I’m going to kill you one day, do you think?’

Prosecutor Eloise Marshall said that Graham ‘would repeatedly cross the line from rough sex into rape’ and tell the victim that she needed to be ‘punished’.

She added: ‘It’s plain from the recordings that at the time the sexual assaults are taking place he’s hurting her she doesn’t want him to carry out those acts.

‘She clearly tells him she doesn’t want him to do those acts.’

‘He knew she wasn’t consenting, he knew she didn’t want him to do those things but he carried on regardless – using her fear and her submission for his own ends.’

Graham initially denied hitting or tying up the woman but later claimed that he was too embarrassed to reveal details of his sex life to police officers.

He even claimed that he had erectile dysfunction.

After being played the recordings, he said it ‘appeared bad’ but insisted that was how they had sex.

In a statement she read personally to the court, she branded Graham a ‘monster’.

She said: ‘You were a serving police officer paid to protect the public – you  used this as a weapon in your power to intimidate and control me.’

‘You repeatedly told me as a police officer that you could do as you liked and that you would tell your colleagues I was mental.’

She added that she didn’t believe she would get out of the relationship alive, and that Graham had even brought a bullet home from work to threaten her with.

‘I was so broken down by you that it actually became normal, every day was about survival – it resulted in this continuing and I thought it would only end when you killed me.’

The victim said that she is now unable to watch sexual scenes on TV or any shouting or violence as it fills her with terror, and that she now finds it difficult to leave the house.

‘I’ve lived in constant fear – every time there was a noise outside or a disturbance I felt unsafe because I thought you were coming to kill me.’

Alisdair Williamson, for Graham, said: ‘He’s given great service to this country both in the army and in the police.

‘He’s been suspended from the police and he will now be formally dismissed, for a man who took such obvious pride in uniformed service to his country these are great blows  – deserved, but they weigh heavily on a man such as he is.’

Graham, of (9) Croft Gardens, (57) Croft Road, Poole, Dorset, denied nine counts of rape and one count of sexual assault relating to strangling the victim.