Kristina O’Connor: ‘Another step towards Justice’

In 2011, Kristina O’Connor turned to the police to report an assault. Instead of safety and care, she found that she was further targeted with crude sexual advances from a member of the force, DCI Mason.

As Kristina says of her whole experience, it is “just one example of the deeply ingrained misogyny and discrimination that is endemic in the Met”.

Now, almost 14 years later and after an arduous legal process that saw a man guilty of eight counts of gross misconduct somehow walk scot-free with nothing more than a written warning, Kristina has won her appeal and the perpetrator may finally be held to account.

The Court of Appeal has found that the panel that initially allowed DCI Mason to keep his job and rank had not provided an adequate analysis of the case, or properly taken the seriousness of the misconduct into account. Put simply, the panel gave no reason for their decision to ask for the lightest sanction possible despite eight counts of gross misconduct.

A further misconduct hearing will follow, and a fresh decision on Mr Mason’s sanctions will be made.

Good Law Project supported Kristina’s case back in 2022 and she was later supported by Law For Change. We are pleased to see this outcome, especially as the Met Police’s misogyny seems to be ever growing. We need to know that we can hold police officers to account. Otherwise, how can women trust the police?

But Kristina O’Connor says, that currently, “Women cannot trust the police. This process has taught me that police will go to greater lengths to protect themselves than they will to protect the safety of victims and vulnerable women”.

She added, “I fundamentally do not believe that the police can be trusted with women’s safety and believe we need to replace the police force with entirely new public services that actually protect and care for women and communities rather than harming them. I am grateful to the Good Law Project and Law For Change in supporting my case.”