A female police officer and domestic violence mentor is facing prison after falsely claiming her ex-partner was abusing her.
Amanda Aston, a constable based at Guildford police station in Surrey, was said to have “embellished and exaggerated” difficulties in her relationship with Matthew Taylor, a sergeant in the same force.
Aston, 43, was found guilty on Thursday of two offences of perverting the course of justice and one of fraud at Maidstone Crown Court, Kent.
Mr Taylor was arrested in 2017 and charged with controlling coercive behaviour. He was later remanded in jail for two months and eventually lost his job with Surrey Police.
It was after his mother trawled his social media accounts and phone messages that he was eventually released from Winchester Prison, where he had spent 23 hours a day locked in a cell, and the Crown Prosecution Service dropped the case against him.
During Aston's trial, the jury heard that she made false allegations of his “control, abuse, harassment, stalking, intimidation and gaslighting” in a witness statement which ran to 57 pages.
As part of the criminal investigation into Mr Taylor, she also gave a video-recorded interview and completed a Domestic Abuse Stalking and Harassment questionnaire designed to ascertain what level of risk she was in.
‘Tortured and traumatised’
Her claims included that the sergeant, also based at the time in Guildford, would grab her around the throat during sex and had left her “tortured and traumatised” with his remarks about what another officer would do to her sexually.
She said she stopped eating, began losing hair and frequently cried herself to sleep as he made her feel “a lesser person”.
Clutching a baby's dummy in her hand, Aston denied a suggestion she was “a conniving puppet-master who liked being the centre of attention”.
But Mr Taylor, 35, told the court that although he could be “obnoxious and patronising” and after his arrest had breached his bail conditions by continuing to see Aston, he had been “the victim of a monumental miscarriage of justice”.
Aston, said to be still a serving officer with Surrey Police, denied perverting the course of justice between Sept 3, 2017 and March 22, 2018.
She was also accused of defrauding the Surrey Police Welfare Fund of £5,000 in June 2018 by claiming she suffered financial hardship as a result of having to move home several times because of Mr Taylor's alleged behaviour.
Adjourning sentencing until May 22, Mr Justice Cavanagh warned Aston, who was released on bail, that she faces a jail term.
‘Demonstrable untruths and distortions’
Prosecutor Eloise Marshall KC said although Aston and Mr Taylor's relationship was “undoubtedly unhealthy and argumentative”, her claims against him consisted of “demonstrable untruths and distortions of the truth”.
“She knew, as a domestic abuse mentor, what those lies would lead to and what it would mean for Mr Taylor," Ms Marshall told the court.
“In her role as a police officer and as a domestic abuse mentor, you can see why her comments are all the more damaging.
“She knew they would lead to the arrest of Mr Taylor and eventually the CPS recommending he be charged with a criminal offence.”
The court heard that although a condition of Mr Taylor’s bail was not to contact Aston, she “actively and enthusiastically encouraged” him to do so, only to then report him for repeated breaches, claiming he “would not leave her alone”.
The court also heard that just five days after completing her lengthy witness statement, she gave him tickets to Ronnie Scott's jazz club in London as a surprise 30th birthday present, telling him she “loved him more than anything in the world”.
“Those lies may have had less importance but for the fact Mr Taylor was arrested again as a result and spent two months in prison, locked in a cell for 23 hours a day,” the prosecutor added.
Mr Taylor then gave all his social media account passwords to his mother.
Hundreds of messages with Aston, many of which she had deleted from her accounts, revealed evidence of their almost constant contact and led to his release and the CPS decision to drop the case.
