Former police watchdog chief Michael Lockwood has been found not guilty of allegations he raped and sexually abused two 14-year-old girls.
The 65-year-old public servant faced 17 criminal charges after he was accused of offences against girls when he worked as a leisure centre lifeguard in the 1980s.
Mr Lockwood quit his job as director general of the Independent Office forPolice Conduct (IOPC) in December 2022 when allegations against him first emerged.
At the Old Bailey on Tuesday, a jury found him not guilty of three charges of rapes and 14 counts of indecent assault.
Mr Lockwood appeared emotional in the dock and thanked the jury before they left court. They had deliberated for ten hours before reaching the not guilty verdicts.
He was first accused of raping and indecently assaulting one of the girls in a storeroom at the leisure centre near Hull.
Following publicity about the claims, a second woman told police he had indecently assaulted her in a male toilet and storeroom at the centre.
Mr Lockwood denied any sexual activity with the first girl, insisting she must have mistaken him for another lifeguard after seeing him on the news.
He accepted having a relationship with the second girl, but said nothing sexual happened until she had turned 16.
Mr Lockwood, a married father-of-two, was a Home Office appointee as head of the IOPC after it replaced the Police Complaints Commission in 2018.
In recent years, his public profile was heightened after the murder of Sarah Everard by a Metropolitan Police officer and riots in the wake of the fatal police shooting of Chris Kaba in London.
Mr Lockwood, a former chief executive at Harrow Council, also worked with survivors after the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire. He resigned as co-chairman of the Grenfell Memorial Trust when he was first publicly accused of rape.
During the trial, it was said he met the schoolgirls when he worked part-time as a lifeguard and was either studying at Hull University or working as an auditor for Humberside County Council.
Giving evidence, Mr Lockwood said he was “absolutely shocked” when confronted with the allegations.
The first woman claimed Mr Lockwood indecently assaulted her as he dropped her home in his Ford Capri and repeatedly raped her in the storeroom at the leisure centre.
She said she felt compelled to report him years later after having children herself, even though she took “no joy” from the impact it had on him, she said.
Mr Lockwood told jurors he did not recognise the woman’s name.
It was alleged the second complainant’s relationship with Mr Lockwood overlapped his engagement to his university girlfriend Jill.
It was claimed Mr Lockwood would pull her into a male toilet cubicle at the centre where he kissed and sexually touched her, later using the storeroom.
Jurors heard it was “common knowledge” among fellow lifeguards who sang a nursery rhyme about them being “locked in the lavatory” together.
But Mr Lockwood said he was “particularly upset” by the claims because she was an ex-girlfriend and “somebody I loved”.
On their age gap, he said: “I thought at the time she acted maturely in a grown-up way. I was quite immature at that age.”
But he disputed her claims that the relationship began when she was underage.
