Nick Lidstone (Picture: PA)

A paedophile police officer who groomed his victim over more than a decade had previously been allowed to keep his job despite being caught taking ‘up-skirt’ photographs of children, a court has heard.

Disgraced Cambridgeshire Police sergeant Nick Lidstone, 54, admitted a series of rapes and child sex attacks relating to one victim at an earlier hearing at Norwich Crown Court.

He was sentenced to 14 and a half years.

The victim, who cannot be named for legal reasons, reported years of abuse which culminated in being raped as an adult.


During a hearing this morning it emerged Lidstone was arrested eight years earlier for taking ‘up-skirt’ pictures of children with a spy pen in a branch of Tesco.



He was given a conditional discharge after pleading guilty to a public order offence at North and East Hertfordshire Magistrates’ Court in 2005. Because he was not charged with a sexual offence, his name was not placed on the sex offenders’ register.

All of his most serious abuse happened after this offence.

Lidstone was allowed to keep his job and it was not until he admitted the abuse last month that he was dismissed from his role at the force’s headquarters.

Prosecutor Andrew Shaw said the pictures were of ‘young children’ and there was some doubt over whether the worst of the images were found.

Kerry Broome, mitigating, said Lidstone had been allowed to stay with the force after agreeing to undergo counselling.

Lidstone, from Heslerton Way, Barrington, Cambridgeshire, pleaded guilty to 13 offences including three counts of rape, three counts of indecency with a child, various sexual assaults and taking an indecent photograph of a child.

Judge Anthony Bate said he had used his victim as a ‘sexual toy’. He placed Lidstone on the sex offenders’ register for life.

He added: ‘You have one previous conviction which has two worrying aspects: firstly, the nature of the offence and secondly, the fact you were convicted under public order legislation when quite clearly these were serious sexual offences.

‘You had armed yourself with a covert camera and were found taking pictures of children. Why on earth you were not charged under the sexual offences act, I do not know.

‘Whoever took that decision, it allowed you to carry on as a police officer.’

Cambridgeshire Police has not yet responded to the judge’s comments.