Former PC Steven Walters and PC Anthony Ritchie were jailed at Birmingham Crown Court on Thursday
By Vanessa Pearce
BBC News, West Midlands
Two former police officers have been jailed over their sexual relationships with vulnerable women they met on duty.
The offences of Anthony Ritchie and Steven Walters involved three women in total, whom they encountered while responding to separate domestic abuse incidents for West Midlands Police.
They were each found guilty at Birmingham Crown Court of two counts of misconduct in a public office.
Ritchie was jailed for four years and Walters for two-and-a-half years.
A trial heard Ritchie, 46, of Tile Cross, Birmingham, had sex with one woman after arresting her partner in 2014, and the same year began a sexual relationship with another after trying to arrest her son.
Charges faced by Walters, 55, of Swadlincote, Derbyshire, pertained to sex acts he initiated in separate events in 2013, with one of the two women involved being the same individual from Ritchie’s first offence.
Walters had already been given a four-year prison sentence for sexually assaulting two different women in 2015 while on duty. He was dismissed by the force in 2016, with the misconduct offences coming to light during a police watchdog investigation several years later following complaints by the woman with whom Ritchie had also had sex.
Her impact statement, read to jurors, said of Walters: “I can’t understand how any decent human being could do what he did.
“He has absolutely ruined my life. He has changed the person I am.”
Image source, Getty Images
One of the officers began a sexual relationship with a woman after trying to arrest her partner
Ritchie began a sexual relationship with the woman, who had reported a domestic violence incident, in 2014, the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) said.
The pair were found to have contacted each other via Ritchie’s personal phone and had sex after he arrested the woman’s partner.
The woman then told him she had been pressured into a sex act by Walters the year before when he responded to a domestic abuse call.
When different officers attended the same woman’s home for an unrelated incident in 2018, she made disclosures to them, sparking an IOPC investigation.
In May 2021, a second woman said she had been in a sexual relationship with Ritchie in 2014.
Ritchie asked that woman on a date after going to her home to arrest her son, had sex with her while on duty and persuaded her to lie to senior officers about how they met when her son complained.
Then, in November 2021, a third woman complained that Walters initiated a sex act while attending a domestic abuse incident at her partner’s home in 2013.
‘Disgraceful actions’
Passing sentence on Thursday, Judge Roderick Henderson thanked the three complainants.
“These were brave women who came forward and stood up for themselves and their community,” he said.
“The effects of sexual offending are never over once the act stops – they continue to ripple out, often for years.”
The IOPC said the “disgraceful actions” had no place in policing.
“Abuse of position for a sexual purpose is a form of serious corruption, which has the potential to impact public confidence in policing,” said Derrick Campbell, IOPC regional director.
“These now former officers would have been well aware of the vulnerability of the women they involved themselves with and yet they chose to exploit that for their own gain.”
Ritchie was dismissed without notice for discreditable conduct at an accelerated hearing held by West Midlands Police on 14 September.
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