A police officer raped a 14-year-old girl after giving her a lift home from a police station 36 years ago, a court heard on Wednesday. Raymond Jeacock, 62, was a 26-year-old detective constable when he followed the then child to her bedroom and told her: “You need fucking,” a jury at Nottingham crown court was told.
“She was shocked and terrified,” said Andrew Vout for the prosecution. “She didn’t fight him; she did as she was told.”
In a 2014 police interview, the woman, now in her 50s, said: “I didn’t fight back, I didn’t tell him to stop, I didn’t do anything [...] I couldn’t cope with the thought that I didn’t do anything.” When questioned by the police two years ago, Jeacock denied the allegations, saying he had “never laid a finger” on the girl.
Outlining the crown’s case more than three decades after the rape is alleged to have happened, Vout said the girl had met the officer before. Her mother had asked Jeacock to “tick her off” for having a sexual relationship with an older boy. “He asked her a number of intimate questions,” he said. “It wasn’t something she particularly enjoyed.”
He explained to the jury why it had taken so long for the case to come to trial: “The jury will understand that in the 36 years that have elapsed, the willingness to investigate and prosecute allegations made by children has undergone something of a sea change.”
The court heard that on 13 December 1980 the girl had visited her then boyfriend in a young offender’s institution in Leicestershire, using the identity of another girl. She was then taken to a police station, after officers arrived wanting to question the older female whose proof of identity she was using.
After the mistake was realised, her father, who was separated from the girl’s mother and lived at a separate address, was called to take her home. But Jeacock told the girl her father had been drinking and that he would take her home himself.
When the girl got home, she opened the door with keys hidden under a plant pot. The former police officer asked her if she would lock the door after him, but she said she would leave it open for her sister, the court heard.
As she was getting ready for bed, she heard a noise. In the recording of the 2014 police interview she said: “I heard someone coming up the stairs. He just walked in and I was in shock, and he just said: ‘You need fucking.’ I did as I was told.”
He pulled one leg out of her trousers and knickers and started to rape her, she said. But during the alleged rape, her father arrived at the house and called up the stairs. “He just whispered to me: ‘Don’t say a word. If he asks, say I was searching.’”
Her parents made a complaint to police and the girl was taken for a medical examination several days after the alleged rape. In the police interview she said the police doctor had told her to undress. “Then he told me I was a little slag and I’d had more pricks than a second-hand dart board,” she told police.
The court heard that Jeacock was “required to resign” on 13 July 1981 after a police disciplinary hearing, but no criminal charges were brought against him.
After the alleged victim went to the police again two years ago, Jeacock denied the allegations. Vout said Jeacock told police he had taken the girl home because no female officers were around. “It couldn’t happen today, but it wasn’t such a big deal in those days,” he told police, adding that the allegations were “extending the misery that was brought to my family”.
Jeacock denies rape. The case continues.
