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Kate Middleton's personal police bodyguard was implicated in a long-running campaign of racial and sexual harassment of a black policewoman.
The case, which was settled out of court in 2004, saw the Metropolitan police pay £300,000 to Joy Hendricks to compensate for what she claimed was "five years of systematic victimisation" during her time in the Met's Territorial Support Group (TSG).
In legal papers lodged at an employment tribunal in 2003, Hendricks named Ieuan Jones, now a detective sergeant and one of Middleton's armed protection officers, as being one of the senior officers responsible for a TSG team which subjected her to abuse and harassment.
Hendricks said that a team of officers destroyed her through racist and sexist abuse.
She has not been able to work since 1999, when she was forced to leave the Met because of stress caused by the alleged harassment.
She said she was bullied in front of members of the public and in private, in front of colleagues, and laughed at "when the abuse reduced me to tears".
After she left the TSG, harassment of Hendricks increased in severity.
Between 1990 and 2004, officers were said to have called her racially abusive names, given her white face paint as a Christmas present and falsely accused her of attacking a policeman. A court later found she had acted in self-defence.
"How would Kate Middleton feel if she knew that one of the three officers responsible for her wellbeing, with whom she has a very close relationship and on whom she needs to rely every single day, had been involved?" asked Hendricks.
"The Met refused to investigate my accusations but they can't say they don't know about them because I made the allegations on the record and submitted them to the employment tribunal. I find it hard to understand how an individual with these unresolved allegations hanging over his head – and they will continue to hang over his head until the Met agrees to the investigation I've been pushing for all these years – has been promoted to a position of trust around our future queen."
Jones was photographed beside Middleton in November, after the announcement of her engagement to Prince William. He has helped protect Princes William and Harry over the past decade. He was photographed in 2004 restraining Prince Harry after he had hit a photographer outside a nightclub, and he ejected alternative comedian gatecrasher Aaron Barschak from Prince William's 21st birthday party in 2003.
Hendricks became a Met officer in 1987. She found herself working under Jones during her first year at the TSG. "He was a senior officer. He had the power and responsibility to stop the harassment, which was relentless and increasingly vicious," she said.
None of the officers accused by Hendricks were disciplined or investigated because although the Met agreed to the payout, they refused to admit liability.
But documents lodged with the employment tribunal in 2003 contain allegations that Jones was involved in and present at a number of specific instances of harassment, including attaching a "learner" sticker to the back of Hendricks's coat during a raid on an illegal rave party.
He was also accused of not letting Hendricks get into a people carrier transporting the rest of the TSG team, by repeatedly driving off whenever she tried to step in.
In the year before she asked to move teams, Hendricks claimed to have suffered repeated humiliations. She was subjected to lewd discussions about herself and other women; pieces of paper were put under her epaulettes and set alight, old fish were put into her helmet and on one occasion she was locked in a room for over an hour.
She was frequently reduced to tears in public, in private, in front of her team and in the parade room without senior officers including Jones intervening.
Buckingham Palace has refused to comment.
The Met said: "The number of witnesses and length of the possible hearing into the claims would have made the cost of contesting the case substantial and this was a considerable factor in deciding to settle the case before the hearing and without admission of liability."
GUARDIAN
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