Former West Yorkshire Police officer jailed for sex assault on vulnerable victim during inquiry
Patrick Banks was jailed by a judge at Sheffield Crown Court who told him: “You grotesquely abused your position as a police officer.”
A single mother has told a court she is revolted by a police officer “who was supposed to protect us” after he sexually assaulted her while investigating a sex offence she had reported.
Patrick Banks, 42, was jailed for three years by a judge at Sheffield Crown Court who told him on Wednesday: “You grotesquely abused your position as a police officer.”
The court heard how Banks had been assigned to investigate after a woman complained to West Yorkshire Police that she had been the victim of a sex assault in Leeds in April 2025.
A judge told the court how Banks asked the woman to translate messages for him from French, before touching her inappropriately as he smelled her hair.
Prosecutor Mark Bates said the messages, which Banks had generated himself using Google Translate, included: “I like you a lot”, “I want to take off your underwear with my teeth”, and “Do you miss sex”.
The court heard how the defendant messaged the woman from his personal phone, and visited her off-duty in his own car, but gave the impression he was on-duty.
He also bought presents for the woman’s child and officers found that he had viewed her social media more than 100 times.
Facing Banks in court on Wednesday, the woman outlined the problems she had been having at that time, which had left her homeless with two children and made her especially vulnerable.
She told the court: “What revolts me today is that the man who was supposed to protect me took advantage of this vulnerability.”
The woman said: “This trauma prevents me seeing the beauty and goodness in the world.”
The judge was told how Banks also made inappropriate contact with a second woman, who had also reported a sexual assault to West Yorkshire Police.
Mr Bates told the court that police recovered 53 pages of messages between the defendant and this second woman, some asking her about personal matters, including her previous employment as a sex worker.
He also asked her for a “peck on the cheek”.
Officers found the woman’s mobile phone in Banks’s house after he had told her it was going off for forensic examination.
The prosecutor said West Yorkshire Police had only one official record of the defendant visiting either of the women’s homes on official police business.
Sentencing Banks, Judge Jeremy Richardson KC said: “It is a particularly aggravating feature of this case that you grotesquely abused your position as a police officer whilst working in the safeguarding unit of the West Yorkshire Police when you were supposed to be investigating sexual crimes perpetrated upon vulnerable women.
“It is bad enough to behave inappropriately in such circumstances. It becomes exceptionally serious when the misconduct embraces a sexual crime.
“You were unhampered by scruples of any kind and your serious misconduct eclipsed your professional duty.”
Banks admitted misconduct in public office and sexual assault at a previous hearing.
The court heard how he joined Essex Police in 2019 and moved to West Yorkshire Police in 2022 and was working as a detective constable in a specialist adult safeguarding unit.
He resigned in September 2025.