A former Met Police officer has been sentenced to 24 years in jail after he was found guilty of 13 counts of sexual assault and rape against three teenage girls.
Anthony Paul Smith, from Weybridge in Surrey, carried out the offences between 1993 and 1997, while serving as a Metropolitan Police officer, with the 56-year-old’s victims aged between 13 and 17.
In the trial which took place in June, all three of Smith’s victims said he raped and sexually abused them in different incidents over the course of several years.
Smith “manipulated” and “controlled” her as well as making her feel “worthless and terrified”, one of his victims told the court.
She said: “To the outside world you were a pillar of the community, a shining example of a police officer – yet here you were, abusing your position of trust, making me feel powerless, guilty and ashamed of what I was being made to do.”
The victim stated that since his abuse, "feelings of guilt, shame and anxiety are my ‘normal’ and I struggle every day to fight this”.
She added: “I have carried the shame of being an abuse victim around with me throughout my life and this has negatively impacted my intimate relationships. Even though I know that the abuse was not my fault, the shame never fully leaves a childhood sexual abuse survivor.”
The police first started looking into Smith in 2020 after one of his victims reported that she was abused by Smith while a teen - with the other two complainants reporting his abuse quickly after this. Smith was imprisoned at Guildford Crown Court on Friday.
Detective Sergeant Matt Cable, of Surrey Police’s sexual offences investigation team, said: “As a police officer at the time of his offending, Smith was in a position of power which meant that his victims did not feel they were able to speak out about what he had done to them until many years later.
“The sentence he has received today reflects the extent of his predatory behaviour in the way he targeted young girls and used them for his own gratification.
“To see him behind bars will hopefully enable these three women to move on with their lives in the knowledge that he has finally been brought to justice for his heinous and indefensible crimes.”
Smith, from Oatlands Drive, departed the Met in 2004 after he was convicted for an unconnected crime of gross indecency with a child under the age of 16.
He previously worked as a swimming teacher in Llandudno, Wales, before he became a police officer in 1987.
Smith’s jailing comes after a string of criticism of the Met Police for its handling of the kidnapping, rape and murder of Sarah Everard in March 2021 by serving officer Wayne Couzens and other recent scandals involving officers.
Everard’s murder shone a spotlight on police failures to properly tackle violence against women and girls within their own ranks.
