Police officer accused of 13 rapes ‘tied up girl with cable ties and threatened to slit her with a knife’, court hears

A Metropolitan Police officer charged with multiple rapes, allegedly tied up one alleged victim and threatened to ‘slit’ her with a knife, a court heard yesterday.

Cliff Mitchell, 24, came under investigation by colleagues after his alleged victim was seen trying to escape from his car, her wrists bound with cable ties, it is claimed.

His fellow officers were summoned, and after that ‘harrowing’ incident, in September last year, an investigation began, Croydon Crown Court was told, leading to a series of allegations against the policeman.

Yesterday Mitchell, who is no longer in the force, faced 13 counts of rape against two alleged victims. Six charges relate to one female – including one when she was aged just 12.

Three of those counts state there were at least 30 other occasions where the girl may have been similarly assaulted.

All of these alleged offences took place between January 2014 and April 2017.

The other seven charges relate to the alleged victim who was threatened in the car with a knife and are said to have taken place between April 2020 and September 2023.

Mitchell, of Wandsworth, south-west London, denies all the charges, claiming that they have been fabricated.

Prosecutor Catherine Farrelly yesterday told the jury that the woman in the car had got into the vehicle before Mitchell warned her that if she tried to run away he would stab her and another person who was in the vehicle.

He is said to have told her: ‘I don’t care about my life any more, you’ve met the devil.’ When she said she felt sick, the prosecutor continued: ‘The defendant told her, “If you throw up in the car, I’m gonna slit your belly for every second you throw up”.’

The woman, whose hands were bound by cable ties, got out of the car to be sick and took the chance to run away, the court heard. 

She was seen by motorists looking ‘distraught and scared’, as she dodged among traffic, and was said to have been screaming: ‘He held a knife up to me, I’m so scared.’

Ms Farrelly said the alleged victim was helped by a driver who allowed her to hide in her car and who saw the cable ties. 

Ms Farrelly noted the woman driver had said: ‘They were so tight that the surrounding skin had turned very red and they looked as though they were digging in.’

The prosecution claim Mitchell sexually abused his first victim from 2014 to 2017 and the second between 2020 and 2023, when ‘he was a serving officer with the Metropolitan Police’.

Ms Farrelly said of the alleged victims: ‘Despite their clearest protestations, he forced his sexual will upon them both, time and time again.’ Mitchell also denies breaching a non-molestation order and two counts of kidnapping. The case continues