PC accused of child rape denies he joined force to meet vulnerable girls
A police officer from Market Drayton accused of raping a 13-year-old girl told jurors he joined the force to “make a difference” not to meet vulnerable youngsters.
Father-of-one Ian Naude, 30, picked the girl up from her home while her mother was out and drove her to a quiet country lane, Liverpool Crown Court heard.
They got in the back seat of his car and had sex, with Naude, a Pc with Cheshire Police, taking photos and videos on his mobile phone.
Naude has admitted 31 offences relating to grooming young girls by exchanging sexual messages and images through a fake persona invented on Facebook. And he admits a charge of sexual activity with a child for the one girl he met in person, the 13-year-old, but maintains she had consented to sex.
He denies rape and sexual assault.
Naude had been called to the girl's house over a domestic incident in October 2017.
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Afterwards, his supervisor warned him the girl had been “flirty”, but Naude then looked her up on Facebook.
Three days later he took her out in his car, the jury heard.
Naude said: "She seemed to be enjoying it. She had her arms around me and she told me she loved me."
A police investigation, started after the teenager reported the alleged assault to her family, discovered it was the "tip of the iceberg" of Naude's offending.
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Police discovered, while at the end of his Army career and as an "aspiring policeman", he had targeted other girls by posing as a 15-year-old boy called Jake Green on Facebook.
He would persuade his victims to undress and sometimes perform sexual acts on camera before sending them pictures and video of himself.
It is alleged Naude is a "committed paedophile" who is "obsessed" with taking the virginity of teenage girls and had regularly been targeting youngsters on the internet.
But Naude denied he joined the police in April 2017 after leaving the Army to meet vulnerable girls through his job, it is alleged.
“I joined because I wanted to help people. I wanted to make a difference,” he told the court.
Naude also denies four charges of attempting to arrange the commission of a child sex offence and one charge of arranging a child sex offence, relating to five complainants aged 12 to 15.
He told the jury that making arrangements to meet was just part of his "fantasy", and he never intended to actually meet the girls.
The trial continues.
