A senior police officer cleared in court of assaulting his wife as he tried to stop her reading sexual WhatsApp messages he sent to a junior colleague has been found guilty of committing gross misconduct by a disciplinary panel. Chief Superintendent
Karl Wilson was accused of rugby tackling his wife and damaging her dress and other items when she spotted the ‘embarrassing’ messages to the woman – then assaulting her again when she picked up his phone after two PCs arrived.
Two charges were dropped in court by the Crown Prosecution Service and he was found not guilty on a third by the district judge.
But the misconduct panel concluded Wilson’s behaviour – including his inappropriate sexual behaviour towards the ‘very junior member of staff of very tender years’, who was referred to as Miss B – amounted to gross misconduct.
Chairman of the misconduct panel, Assistant Chief Constable Andrew Hill, who heard the disgraced officer had exchanged 2,800 messages with the woman in just over a week and initiated most of the sexual content, said he would have been sacked from Northumbria Police if he hadn’t quit already.
