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A former police officer has been jailed after using his position to target and contact vulnerable women he met on the job, with a judge finding he preyed on those he was sworn to protect.
Brett Johnson, 42, was sentenced in the Melbourne County Court to six months in prison with a two-year community corrections order for misconduct in public office, after admitting to pursuing women he met while working as a police officer between 2006 and 2019.
Brett Johnson in uniform.
“Your actions caused immense and ongoing distress to vulnerable women who were forced to seek assistance and protection from the police force,” Judge Liz Gaynor said. “They faced domestic violence, in many cases, in their own lives.
“The fact that the distressing demise of your engagement led to an ongoing fracturing of your self-esteem … in no way justifies your continuous exercise of abuse of power that you exercised over many years.
“You utterly betrayed that trust.”
Johnson admitted he used Victoria Police’s internal database, the Law Enforcement Assistance Program (LEAP), to carry out unauthorised checks on women and find their phone numbers or other contact details. He admitted 10 counts of misconduct relating to nine women.
Brett Johnson (centre) pleaded guilty to 10 counts of misconduct in public office last month.Credit: James Ross
He left the force in 2021 after the allegations emerged.
Referring to her time with Johnson, one woman, Victoria*, said in a victim impact statement read to the court: “I’m frustrated that I never saw the real Brett Johnson over 11 years, and I’m ashamed that as a grown woman I couldn’t recognise lies being told to my face.”
In 2015, Victoria had texted Johnson, with whom she had had a sexual relationship, and told him she was suicidal. He responded with a two-word text: “Wanna f—.”
She had met Johnson in 2011 when she handed in a stolen laptop to Richmond police station, an interaction Johnson used as a pretext to contact her on his personal phone and arrange to see her afterwards.
Victoria* outside the County Court last month.Credit: Joe Armao
Victoria, a vulnerable woman with a difficult home life, was flattered by the attention of an officer and began a sexual relationship with him. But she later found out she wasn’t the only woman Johnson had contacted after meeting on the job.
“I’m disgusted that he used and abused the position of public [trust] to gain sex,” she said in the statement.
In court on Tuesday, Johnson remained silent as he was sentenced. He will perform 300 hours of unpaid community work and undergo mental health treatment on a two-year community corrections order.
The court heard he had been traumatised by a break-up 20 years ago and had relentlessly pursued relationships with women due to low self-esteem.
Judge Gaynor said: “It must be made very clear to the community, particularly the community of police officers, that the power they hold is a privilege, one which should be honoured, and that they have a sworn duty to protect those and serve those that come to them in the circumstances that these women did, circumstances which involved fears around their personal safety. ”
This month, the state’s police watchdog, the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission, found some officers continued to engage in predatory behaviour towards vulnerable members of the public despite internal efforts to detect and subdue the problem, and that the conduct remained under-reported.
In an IBAC review released on May 2, analysis of 27 police investigations between 2018 and 2022 into predatory behaviour by officers revealed that women experiencing domestic or family violence were often targets.
Separately, police accountability lawyer Jeremy King said the LEAP database “is a system that is not fit for purpose, and has been routinely abused by police officers over many years. The breach of trust is significant.”
*Victoria is a pseudonym imposed by the court. She gave The Age permission to publish a photo identifying her.
Support is available from the National Sexual Assault, Domestic Family Violence Counselling Service at 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732).
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