A Metropolitan Police officer has been cleared by a jury of misconduct in public office after he was accused of showing CCTV footage of two women being raped to his girlfriend.
PC Adam Aspinall Da Encarnacao, 33, faced an allegation that he showed Maria Niebla a video of Mohamed Iidow attacking mother-of-three Natalie Shotter in a west London park.
Ms Niebla told Southwark Crown Court it was “the most f***ing horrible thing I’ve seen in my entire life”, as she accused the PC of telling her: “It’s unbelievable, you have to see it”.
But PC Aspinall Da Encarnacao, who was involved in investigating sexual offences with the Met, insisted he had never showed her the footage.
He said Ms Niebla’s allegations were “malicious”, and stemmed from the breakdown of their relationship.
Ms Shotter, an NHS worker, was orally raped by Iidow as she lay unconscious on a park bench in Southall, west London, in July 2021.
He was jailed for life last year after being convicted of rape and manslaughter.
PC Aspinall Da Encarnacao had legitimate access to the CCTV footage of the attack as he was involved in the hunt for Iidow and needed to see the clip to compare with other CCTV footage from around the area, the court heard.
Ms Niebla accused him of also showing her footage from a second rape, in December 2021, when a woman had been held at knifepoint.
The court was told the couple met in February 2021 and began dating, but they split on July 10 2022.
Eight days later, Ms Niebla went to police to accuse the PC of controlling and abusive behaviour. No criminal charges stemmed from that complaint.
However, in 2024 he was charged with misconduct in public office over the allegations Ms Niebla had made about the CCTV footage during her initial report to police.
When he first appeared in court after being charged, PC Aspinall Da Encarnacao carried a copy of “Credible and True: The Political And Personal Memoir of K Harvey Proctor, a former Conservative member of parliament” while standing in the dock.
Mr Proctor, a former MP, was wrongly accused of sexual offences, before being exonerated in an investigation that discovered the claims had been made by a serial fantasist. In her complaint, Ms Niebla described in detail the videos she said she had watched.
Jurors then watched the footage in order to reach a verdict in the case.
PC Aspinall Da Encarnacao, of Loudwater in Buckinghamshire, denied and was acquitted by a jury of two counts of misconduct in public office.
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