Cheshire Police dismissed a constable without notice on April 28 after an accelerated misconduct hearing found he had exchanged sexually explicit messages with a dozen women while on shift, including texts describing a rape role-playing fantasy. The misconduct report, written by Chief Constable Mark Roberts and published this week, concluded that former PC Anthony Spelman's conduct amounted to gross misconduct and undermined public confidence in policing.
The details were first laid out by the Liverpool Echo, which obtained the police document and reported that Spelman, who served in a role protecting vulnerable people, sent as many as 90 sexualised messages a day between April and September 2023.
What the misconduct report found
Spelman faced four allegations at the private hearing. The report logged a pattern of behaviour during working hours across five months. On April 12, 2023, between 8.53am and 10.05am, he exchanged 18 messages in a sexualised conversation with a woman who knew he was on duty.
The following day, the report records, a woman asked whether he was into anything extreme. He replied: I like rape role-playing, being outside, the risk element...but then, I like being gentle in a bed x. When she remarked that the word rape sounded frightening coming from a police officer, he described it as consensual dom sub role play.
Chief Constable Roberts found that Spelman shared these fantasies with two women and that, given his role in protecting vulnerable people, the exchanges were wholly inappropriate and revealed misogynistic views.
Why the volume of messages mattered
The report found Spelman was in contact with 12 women in total. Roberts wrote that the frequency of the exchanges revealed an all consuming desire for sexual gratification that made diligent policing impossible.
Frankly it would be impossible to be diligently discharging your policing duties, given the frequency of these exchanges, Roberts wrote in the report.
The document also records that Spelman pursued a woman whose son he had previously arrested, after finding her on a dating site and recognising her. He then engaged in sexually explicit messaging with her and met her for sexual activity, according to the report. In one message sent on August 19 while he was on duty, Spelman wrote that he was in the cells in Middlewich but would rather be elsewhere with the recipient. He was also found to have searched for pornographic content while on duty three times in September 2023.
Spelman shared images of women, including nude images, with friends while making derogatory comments about them, the report states. Chief Constable Roberts noted that his length of service made the behaviour more shocking, not less, because it demonstrated personal views wholly at odds with the constabulary's values.
Dismissal was necessary to protect the public
In his conclusions, Roberts set out the three purposes of the police misconduct regime: maintaining public confidence in the police service, upholding high standards and deterring misconduct, and protecting the public.
A lesser sanction than dismissal would not serve to uphold high standards and deter misconduct that is so completely out of keeping with colleagues' and the constabulary's ethics and values, Roberts wrote.
He added that dismissal was necessary to bar Spelman's re-entry into the profession and to protect the public from a police officer who could potentially cause this kind of harm in future. Spelman offered no mitigation, according to the report.
Colleagues saw it coming, one former officer says
A former colleague, speaking to the Liverpool Echo on condition of anonymity, said Spelman was a nightmare to manage and would play the women against each other.
You could see this coming for years, the former colleague said.
A wider crisis of police misconduct
The case lands amid continuing scrutiny of police behaviour across the UK. The BBC reported this week that a police officer, Carmichael John Williamson, was found guilty of raping a girl and a woman in Shetland following a trial at the High Court in Edinburgh, a case that has renewed questions about vetting and culture within British forces.
Deputy Chief Constable Mike Evans said officers swear an oath of honesty and integrity before beginning their careers, and that Spelman ignored those principles on a number of occasions and thought he could act in such an unacceptable way without consequence.
He was wrong, Evans said. His actions do not reflect what the constabulary stands for and anyone found breaching the principles and guidelines we are proud to uphold across the force, will face similar consequences.
For liberals who hold that institutions earn their authority through accountability, the report offers a measure of reassurance: the system, in this instance, worked. But the colleague's remark that warning signs were visible for years raises the harder question of whether forces act early enough, or only once misconduct becomes impossible to contain.
FAQ
When was Anthony Spelman dismissed?
He was dismissed without notice on April 28, 2026, following an accelerated misconduct hearing. The report by Chief Constable Mark Roberts was published this week, according to the Liverpool Echo.
How many women did Spelman message?
The misconduct report found he was in contact with 12 women, exchanging as many as 90 sexually explicit messages a day while on duty between April and September 2023.
Can Spelman return to policing?
No. Chief Constable Roberts said the dismissal was necessary to bar his re-entry into the profession and protect the public from potential future harm.