Met Police Safer Schools officer jailed over string of ‘ghastly’ child sex offences

A paedophile Metropolitan Police Safer Schools officer has been jailed for five years over a string of child sex offences including having sex with a 14-year-old girl.

PC Hussain Chehab, 22, was sentenced at Wood Green Crown Court on Friday for four counts of sexual activity with a girl aged 13 to 15 and offences linked to indecent images of children.

The sexual activity offences took place between March and September 2019, before Chehab joined the Metropolitan Police the following year.

They only came to light when the girl’s family reported in July 2021 that their daughter had been in a sexual relationship with Chehab, which it later emerged began when she was 14.

Chehab also admitted three counts of making indecent photographs of a child and one of engaging in sexual communication with a child.

In the trial, Wood Green Crown Court also heard that the officer was found with 882 still and moving indecent images of children on his devices while a Met officer. 

The Met said some of these offences were committed while he was posted at a north London school between May and August 2021.

He was dismissed from Scotland Yard without notice, with Barbara Grey, the Met’s assistant commissioner responsible for professionalism, telling The Times earlier this month: ‘These types of offences undermine the public’s confidence in the police service.’

Sir Mark Rowley apologised to Chehab’s victims when he appeared at the London Assembly Police and Crime Committee in January of this year.

He said: ‘The sexual contact offences took place before he joined the police but sadly they weren’t known. And then whilst he was in the police he was taking part in what you might broadly describe as grooming activity.

‘It is ghastly and obviously you apologise to the victims, they shouldn’t be facing that at the hands of a police officer.’

No verdict was recorded in a further four counts of making indecent photographs of a child, which the judge ordered to lie on file.

An accelerated misconduct process will be held in light of the guilty pleas, the Met said. 

The revelations come as Scotland Yard grapples with the fallout from the David Carrick scandal, after the beleaguered force was found to have had one of Britain’s worst rapists lurking within its ranks for 20 years.

Chehab had sex with the schoolgirl on at least two occasions between March 1 and November 16, 2019, when he was aged 18 and before he joined the Met Police.

Chehab joined the Met on March 30, 2020 and came to police attention in July 2021 after a complaint was made.

He was arrested the following month, while he was working as a safer schools officer in a secondary school in Enfield, which is one of the boroughs he covered alongside Haringey.

Case manager at the misconduct hearing was PC Christie Koller, who told the hearing that after officers seized Chabab’s personal devices, they discovered indecent images of children and text messages with the 14-year-old schoolgirl. 

She added that Chebab discredited the police service with his behavour. 

Chehab was served with the misconduct papers on February 21, but did not attend the hearing. 

Of these, 293 were Category A images – the most serious – and some were said to have been of children aged just two.

Sarah Ellis, defending Chehab, said the images had come to be on his devices due to membership of chat groups, adding he did not seek images of the youngest children himself.

‘He will say that yes he had an interest in teenagers but he does not have an interest in children as young as two,’ she told the court.

Judge John Dodd, KC, released him on bail under strict conditions he must not contact his victim or have unsupervised contact with anyone aged under 18.

But he warned Chehab, from Barnet, north London, that he faced a lengthy prison term.

‘You have admitted some extremely serious offences and I don’t want you to misunderstand – you must prepare yourself for a prison sentence,’ Judge Dodd said.