One late summer evening, Debbie cracked. After weeks of deliberating, she phoned Merseyside Police to report her partner for serious allegations of physical and verbal abuse. It was a decision she would soon regret. The problem, she says, is that he was an officer with the same force.



“He used to say the police would protect him and if I phoned up against him, he’d just get me put in prison,” she said. “One day it was too much and I did phone. In hindsight that was the biggest mistake of my whole life.”

Domestic abuse is often predicated on fear. Fear of what your abuser will do next, fear that you're going mad, fear that no one will believe you. Many of those affected are understandably afraid of how their partner will react if they report them; some do so anyway.

So what happens when your abuser is part of the system that's supposed to protect you?

Debbie is one of multiple women who have told the Bureau of Investigative Journalism they suffered emotional or physical abuse at the hands of police officer partners, and that they believe their partners used their professional positions to seek to intimidate or harass them.

From across the country we heard claims that alleged abusers got their partners repeatedly arrested, stalked them in marked cars, or warned them there was no point going to the police because the force was "a family."

Some were too scared to ever report it. For those that did go to the police, the experience only served to traumatise them further, they say. They feel their partners’ colleagues failed to adequately follow up on serious allegations and that they were discouraged from making statements. Some complained about their treatment but the complaints were not upheld.

What had happened to these women was “sickening,” said Shadow Policing Minister Louise Haigh. But their stories may be pieces of a bigger picture, our investigation suggests.

Police officers and staff across the UK were reported for alleged domestic abuse almost 700 times in the three years up to April 2018, according to Freedom of Information responses - more than four times a week on average. The real figure is likely to be much higher as data was only provided by 37 of the UK’s 48 police forces (including specialist forces).

Beyond the number of allegations, the figures suggest reports about alleged abuse by police are treated differently. Just 3.9% in England and Wales ended in a conviction, compared with 6.2% among the general population. Less than a quarter of reports resulted in any sort of professional discipline. Greater Manchester Police, one of the country’s biggest forces, secured just one conviction out of 79 reports over the three year period.