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Michael Lockwood, 65, is on trial at the Old Bailey accused of 17 charges, three rapes and 14 indecent assaults, relating to the children between 1979 and 1986. It is claimed that while in his 20s, he repeatedly raped one of the girls in a storeroom at a leisure centre near Hull, in East Yorkshire. He pulled another girl into a male toilet cubicle at the centre where he kissed and sexually touched her, it was claimed.
Jurors heard it was “common knowledge” among fellow lifeguards who sang about them being “locked in the lavatory” together. Opening the trial on Thursday, prosecutor Jonathan Polnay KC said Lockwood had worked at the leisure centre while a student at Hull University and later, after he got a job as senior auditor at Humberside County Council. He went on to have a “distinguished” career in local government before becoming director general of the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), which is the police complaints watchdog for England and Wales, the court was told.
The first woman to come forward was a “naive and inexperienced” 14-year-old schoolgirl when she met Lockwood at the leisure centre in the 1980s, jurors heard. Lockwood would give her a lift home in his Ford Capri car, which she thought was “incredibly cool”, the court was told. Mr Polnay said: “The imbalance is obvious in everything, age, money, experience and power.
” After Lockwood first kissed the girl on a walk after dark, she thought they were in a “proper relations.
