A student Metropolitan Police officer went into the ladies toilets of a nightclub for sexual activity with a drunk 18-year-old woman, a misconduct panel has found. Thomas Ioannou, who was studying to be a PC on the force, was caught on camera kissing the young woman and grabbing her bottom as they entered a cubicle together.
When busted by security at Pryzm nightclub in Kingston-upon-Thames, Ioannou held his hands up to apologise before lying that the woman was his “girlfriend”. A misconduct panel heard the woman met Ioannou, then 25, on a night out with a friend in August 2022, and was visibly drunk when they entered the toilets.
Ioannou, who was socialising with fellow student Met Police officers, said he and the woman had met that night, and had spent time buying each other drinks. A member of bar staff described the teenager as “quite drunk”, saying: “She didn’t seem normal and her face wasn’t all there.
“She wasn’t falling all over the place but I would say she displayed the standard type of behaviour I usually see from drunk people in the club.”. Ioannou was questioned over an alleged sexual assault following the incident, but insisted all contact had been consensual.
He claimed he accidentally went to the ladies toilet - believing it was the mens - and insisted only kissing and touching of the woman’s bottom happened, consensually, in the cubicle. Ioannou resigned from the Met before he could face misconduct proceedings.
