Just when trust in the Met police couldn’t sink any lower another story of another ‘bad apple’ in the force has emerged. This time, a serving Met Police officer, who was posted in a school in north London, has pleaded guilty to child sex offences.
News broke this morning that PC Hussain Chehab, 22, admitted four counts of sexual activity with a girl aged 13-15, three counts of making indecent photographs of a child, and sexual communication with a child.
Speaking to the Greater London Authority's Police and Crime Committee this morning, Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley described the case as ‘ghastly’ and apologised to the victims and their families. ‘They shouldn't be facing that at the hands of a police officer,’ he said.
The Met said Chehab joined the force in March 2020 and was attached to the North Area Command Unit, serving as a Safer Schools officer in a secondary school in Enfield between May and August 2021.
Investigators also found a number of indecent images when they seized his digital devices, and he was arrested for further offences and suspended from duty in October 2021, according to a spokesperson for the Met.
When police analysed his devices, they found messages between Chehab and a 14-year-old girl engaging in sexual communication. The teenager later provided evidence to police that they had entered into a sexual relationship in 2019, when she was 14.
Chehab appeared at Wood Green Crown Court on Tuesday and will be sentenced on 17 March.
This all comes barely a week after Met police officer David Carrick pleaded guilty to 49 offences, which included dozens of rape and sexual offences against 12 women over two decades. Most terrifying of all was how Carrick was able to continue serving as a police officer after multiple allegations against him had been received by the force. He was only suspended from duty when he was arrested in October 2021. The Met apologised after it emerged Carrick had come to the attention of police over nine incidents, including rape allegations, between 2000 and 2021.
And of course, this follows the devastating murder of Sarah Everard at the hands of a serving Met police officer, when her killer, Wayne Couzens, used his position of power to commit Sarah’s rape and murder in March 2021. The Met recently admitted that more than 1,000 of its officers and staff remain in service despite being accused of sexual offences or domestic abuse.
The Met said no evidence had linked any of Chehab's offending to his role. He was arrested in August 2021 and placed on restricted duties, including having to work within the confines of a police building in a non-public-facing role, and having no contact with schools or children.
But it raises more questions about how women can trust the police when we’re bombarded with headlines about a toxic police culture that enables predatory men to operate with a feeling of impunity.
What’s clear is that it’s not a case of the occasional ‘bad apple’; huge effort must be made to root out institutional misogyny, because the volume of these cases suggests it’s a system that’s rotten to its core.