A police officer who repeatedly reported her ex-boyfriend for assaulting her has been sacked after her colleagues discovered he did not exist.
PC Nadia Thurley made 14 allegations against the ‘fictional’ Dan Jones, which led to police wasting ‘extensive’ resources investigating the supposed crimes.
The 29-year-old appeared at Hampshire & Isle of Wight Constabulary with ‘visible injuries’ – just eight months after starting work there as a constable in December 2020.
She told colleagues she was attacked by a former partner.
The lies continued in March 2021, when PC Thurley said Mr Jones approached herin the New Forest telling police he was ‘armed with a knife’.
But officers attending the scene noted she did not have any ‘mud or debris on her clothing despite extremely boggy and muddy conditions’.
In the hopes of catching Mr Jones, an operations team installed covert CCTV in PC Thurley’s home in Marchwood, near Southampton.
This is how her web of lies was finally uncovered.
Unaware of the surveillance cameras, the officer reported two further incidents in July 2021 at her home address, claiming Mr Jones had been there.
Presenting the case at a disciplinary hearing, detective inspector Simon Clifford said: ‘Significantly, given the evidence that PC Thurley provides at the scene of the route taken by Jones into her address, it can be proven from the CCTV cameras that nobody attends her address.’
Less than a month later, PC Thurley was arrested and charged with two counts of perverting the course of justice for the two incidents in July.
Last month, following a court case at Bristol Crown Court, a jury found her guilty of the offences – which she denied and insisted she was ‘telling the truth’.
DI Clifford told the hearing ‘fabricating the existence of a boyfriend is dishonest and lacks integrity and disciplinary action is warranted’.
PC Thurley did not attend the hearing, held at Hampshire Constabulary Operational HQ in Winchester.
Instead, she sent an email which stated: ‘The only representation I wish to make is to say that all I have ever done is tell the truth, and follow directions given by my line managers.’
It is understood PC Thurley, now of Woking, Surrey, has been ‘unwell’ and suffered PTSD from an incident in 2020, whereby she witnessed a fellow officer get stabbed.
However, DI Clifford said: ‘It is the [appropriate authorities] case, as it was in the case of the Prosecutor at trial, that this is not a case about mental health but one of malingering, or lying.’
Throughout all the investigations, she did not provide any details to officers about the identity of Mr Jones.
DI Clifford added: ‘PC Thurley has provided no verifiable evidence of Dan Jones.
‘Depending on the source of information, she was either seeing him for 12 months or 18 months, she can only describe him as a white male with dark hair and dark eyes, with a tattoo on his ankle – but then to others she has said no tattoo.
‘He is anywhere between 5′ 8″ and 6’ and either a slim, average or muscular build.”
He continued: ‘PC Thurley’s criminal conviction represents some of the most serious that a police officer could face as one that goes to the heart of an officer’s honesty and integrity.
‘The public confidence in both her and Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary will be damaged when they know a police officer has lied so extensively.’
Scott Chilton, chief constable for Hampshire and Isle of Wight, sacked his officer with immediate effect and without notice.
He said he is ‘saddened’ that an officer with first hand knowledge of victims of such ‘horrific crimes’ would ‘choose to lie about a violent assault’.
‘Whatever the reason for these actions to deceive the police and criminal justice system, there is no doubt that it impacts the women and men who are beaten, stabbed and abused by their partners and ex-partners and look to the police to bring their perpetrators to justice,’ he added.
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