FAR NORTH POLICE OFFICER CAUGHT IN CHILD SEX MISCONDUCT SCANDAL
A serving far north police officer who exchanged sexual images with a 12-year girl has been found to have committed gross professional misconduct.Aiden Love was a constable with the Civil Nuclear Constabulary (CNC) at Dounreay when he cat-fished the girl on Instagram in late March last year.
He resigned from the force before he could have been sacked after the girl’s mother discovered what had been going on.
The exchanges began innocently but he began to repeatedly ask for explicit pictures of her despite being told she was 12 or 13.
She eventually relented and sent him face and body shots, which he said were “hot” or “sexy.” A court heard 34-year-old Love had claimed he was 14, called Andrew and was from Inverness.
Love, then living in Halkirk, admitted at Wick Sheriff Court last July making an indecent sexual communication and causing the girl to look at a sexual image.
He was sentenced to a three-year community payback order, ordered to carry out 225 hours of unpaid community work and placed on the sex offenders register.
Despite his resignation, the CNC pressed on with his misconduct hearing on January 15 this year.
Love failed to respond to correspondence and was not present at the proceedings.
The three-person panel found he had committed gross misconduct.
Chair, CNC Assistant Chief Constable Michael Vance, said he was satisfied they could proceed in Love’s absence as every effort had been made to notify him of the hearing.
In its written findings, the panel state that Love stands accused of discreditable conduct and breaches of the required standards of professional behaviour.
ACC Vance said: “The factual basis of the allegations is his conduct in engaging in indecent sexual communications with a 12-year-old girl by pretending to be a 14-year-old boy.
He persuaded her to send him images of [herself] and he in turn sent her images of [himself].” The details of the case against the officer are “shocking,” he said.
“The public would be rightly appalled to learn that a serving police officer had engaged in conduct which involved causing a child to look at a sexual image and of communicating indecently with her.
The case speaks for itself.” The panel viewed the degree of Love’s culpability as very high.
Said ACC Vance: “This was a criminal offence committed against a child.
This was planned and targeted misconduct aimed at a vulnerable victim.
It was a gross breach of trust against a female child by a serving officer who dishonestly pretended to be a young boy for his own sexual gratification.
This behaviour serves to undermine public confidence in the police service.
The harm was both direct, in that the child was a victim of the officer’s offending and indirect, in that it casts a serious and dark shadow on the reputation of the police service.
Violence against women and girls and sexual misconduct towards them, especially by serving police officers, is a matter of high public concern at the moment.” ACC Vance concluded: “In the panel’s judgment if this officer were still serving, he would have been dismissed without notice for gross misconduct and this is their decision.
Nothing less would have been sufficient to protect the public or to maintain confidence in the police.”
