A student Metropolitan Police officer went into the ladies toilets of a nightclub for sexual activity with a drunk 18-year-old woman, a misconduct panel has found.
Thomas Ioannou, who was studying to be a PC on the force, was caught on camera kissing the young woman and grabbing her bottom as they entered a cubicle together.
When busted by security at Pryzm nightclub in Kingston-upon-Thames, Ioannou held his hands up to apologise before lying that the woman was his “girlfriend”.
A misconduct panel heard the woman met Ioannou, then 25, on a night out with a friend in August 2022, and was visibly drunk when they entered the toilets.
Ioannou, who was socialising with fellow student Met Police officers, said he and the woman had met that night, and had spent time buying each other drinks.
A member of bar staff described the teenager as “quite drunk”, saying: “She didn’t seem normal and her face wasn’t all there.
“She wasn’t falling all over the place but I would say she displayed the standard type of behaviour I usually see from drunk people in the club.”
Ioannou was questioned over an alleged sexual assault following the incident, but insisted all contact had been consensual.
He claimed he accidentally went to the ladies toilet - believing it was the mens - and insisted only kissing and touching of the woman’s bottom happened, consensually, in the cubicle.
Ioannou resigned from the Met before he could face misconduct proceedings.
A panel this month saw CCTV showing the officer and the woman “approaching the toilet area while holding hands”, and she “points towards the entrance of the female toilets”.
Ioannou, the panel ruled, hesitates outside the entrance to the toilets, looks over his shoulder and then walks into the female toilets.
The misconduct hearing concluded the woman was vulnerable due to her level of drunkenness, and it was Ioannou who “ushered” her towards the cubicle.
“He is seen kissing (her) in the doorway of the toilet cubicle and placing his hand on her bottom”, they said.
Ioannou, who called the woman a “willing and enthusiastic partner”, told security staff at Pryzm “she’s my girlfriend” as he was being ejected from the ladies toilets.
He said he meant it in a “colloquial Cypriot sense”, saying he was intending to convey “she is a friend who is a girl”.
But the misconduct panel found his explanation “lacked credibility” and Ioannou “knew that he was lying”.
Finding him guilty of gross misconduct, they ruled he would have been sacked if he was still a serving officer.
Ioannou’s name will now be added to the police barring list.
