Police officer who used cadet scheme to carry out sex attacks on boys and girls jailed

From the Mirror and the Manchester Evening News

A police officer who sexually assaulted teenage cadets in a scheme he used as a “grooming playground” has been jailed for five years.

Pc Adnan Ali, 36, abused young people on the trainee scheme he ran for Greater Manchester Police, and was convicted at Liverpool Crown court of 20 charges in relation earlier this year.

The disgraced officer from Trafford, Greater Manchester, was arrested in 2018 after on 16-year-old boy came forward to say he was sexually assaulted by Ali.

Ali, has already been dismissed and barred from policing following a misconduct hearing in April last year. Greater Manchester Police’s Chief Constable dismissed Ali and ordered that he be barred from policing when gross misconduct was proven in April 2022. As to not prejudice criminal proceedings, the hearing had to be held in private and the outcome could not be published until they had concluded.

GMP is also taking action to remove Adnan’s pension.

The father-of-one was jailed on Friday after being convicted of five counts of sexual assault and 15 counts of misconduct in a public office.

Judge Denis Watson KC said Ali “deliberately ignored” safeguarding guidelines, instead using the scheme as a “vanity” project “to be seen as the star of [the] Greater Manchester Police cadet programme”.

Ali, known as Adz, became police leader of Trafford cadets in 2013 after suffering post traumatic stress disorder after a serious knife injury while on duty. He was based in Stretford and the cadet unit rapidly grew to about 130 cadets, the largest group in Greater Manchester.

Anne Whyte KC, prosecuting, said Ali’s incentive was sexual gratification. She told the court: “The overwhelming common denominator from all of those is the scale of loss of trust in these young people for other people in authority.”

(She) told the court that Ali led ‘vulnerable young people’ who he formed informal relationships with. She described Ali’s actions as a “form of grooming” and that he enjoyed the “power disparity” between himself and his victims “knowing they relied upon his good voice for advancement”.

Ali’s behaviour was described as a ‘breach of trust’ as he abused the disparity in power between himself and his victims with many of the cadets coming from disadvantaged backgrounds or broken homes.

Jane Osborne KC, defending Ali, conceded this was an ‘inherent abuse of trust’ but argued the offending in Ali’s case was “less serious than in many seen in misconduct cases”.  Ms Osborne KC added that he still suffers from mental health issues due to the attack in 2013 and that there was much personal mitigation to go in his favour.