Met Police officer raped 16-year-old girl during 'date', court hears

Teenager says 38-year-old assaulted her in a woodland and children's play area

Helen William,Harriet Agerholm
Tuesday 24 April 2018 16:48 BST
A second officer is under investigation over the same incident
A second officer is under investigation over the same incident

A police officer raped a 16-year-old student twice during a “hellish” date, a court has heard.

Metropolitan Police officer Adam Provan forced himself on the teenager in a woodland and on a bench near a children’s playground in summer 2010, London’s Wood Green Crown Court was told.

The girl’s father was told the pair were going to the cinema, but the prosecution said the PC raped her in a wood before taking her to a fast-food drive-through in Romford, Essex.

There, he bought milkshakes and researched film plots on his mobile phone to convince the girl’s father they had watched a movie, according to Prosecutor Anthony Metzer QC.

Mr Provan, 38, of Kirtling in Newmarket, Suffolk, denies two counts of rape.

The jury were told they met after being introduced by a mutual friend in late summer 2010 and decided to go on a date.

Mr Metzer told the jury the teenager, who had recently taken her GCSE exams, felt Mr Provan “groomed her for several days, exchanging messages and photographs”.

At the girl’s request, the 38-year-old met her father before the date at their house, where it emerged the two men knew each other through general acquaintances.

He realised Mr Provan was around 31 years old, rather than the 22 years of age he had told her. But the father was “reassured” by the fact he was a serving police officer, the jury heard.

The court heard Mr Provan drove for 15-20 minutes to some woods and a tree trunk where the first rape is alleged to have happened.

Mr Metzer said that Mr Provan asked for a kiss and she briefly kissed him.

He told the jury Mr Provan touched her breasts and pulled out a condom, before adding: “He asked her if they should ‘do it’, meaning to have sex. She said 'No'.

“He kept asking and she stepped away, but this refusal wasn’t sufficient for Mr Provan to desist.

“He continued saying they should ‘do it’ and telling her to take her trousers down. She continued to refuse but he did not give up.”

He pulled his trousers down and pinned her to the tree where she “froze with fear”, Mr Metzer said.

After the first alleged rape the teenager tried to escape from the woods and left her bag in his car.

She was “effectively Mr Provan’s prisoner”, according to Mr Metzer.

Mr Provan later took her for another walk, while she was “still traumatised” and from the first alleged incident, the court was told.

Mr Metzer said: “They went to a children’s play area where he played in the swings while she remained passive from her fresh trauma.”

He then took her to a bench on a hill and insisted on another sex act, it was claimed.

The complainant felt “too guilty” to report the alleged incidents to police but eventually told several people including her stepmother.

In his police interview after being arrested in June 2016, Mr Provan said he took the teenager for a walk “so as not to be impolite, but nothing occurred of a sexual nature”.

He also denied kissing her.

After being charged, he told the officers: “I have never ever hurt anybody of a sexual nature in my life.”

The woman broke down in tears several times as she gave evidence from behind a screen.

She recalled telling Mr Provan no “about four times” in relation to the first alleged incident and “three or four times” regarding the second.

She described Mr Provan as just “a two out of 10” on a scale of attractiveness and said she was not interested in him sexually.

Mr Metzer asked her, again on a scale from one to 10, about how clear she had been about not wanting sexual contact with Mr Provan in both alleged instances.

She replied: “10.”

Asked why she kissed him at the tree trunk, the woman said: “I did not think much of a peck on the lips.”

She described feeling “empty and numb” after the first alleged incident and just wanting to go home.

The trial continues.

Press Association contributed to this report

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