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When professional standards police first called Amanda* to ask her how she knew policeman Andrew Craig Adams, she professed he was the nicest policeman she’d ever met.
He had offered to buy her coffee during her darkest days, messaged outside of work hours offering support and even flirted with her a little over what would turn out to be four years of contact.
Then a bombshell dropped. She was one of a string of domestic violence survivors being contacted inappropriately by a person they thought was their knight in shining armour. A policeman and former church pastor.
A meticulous notetaker, Amanda arrived to meet professional standards police armed with a folder of information.
In it were pages of text messages, phone communications and diary notes of odd things that didn’t quite sit right, so much so she’d call her mother for advice.
“He once wanted to catch up with me at 10pm at night. I had to make up an excuse, that I had a migraine, but it seemed weird,” she claimed.
“At the time, my ex was a prolific offender, I was being stalked. Andrew Adams genuinely pretended he was worried for me and the only person in my corner. The white knight in this horrible situation.”
A decade ago, Amanda’s abusive partner hit her with an intervention order claiming she was the violent one, and sent her a message to say “payback’s a b–ch”.
Following a lawyer’s advice, Amanda called the Greensborough police station to tell the police informant she was holidaying overseas when the alleged break-in at her ex-partner’s house was meant to have occurred.
“Andrew Adams called me back,” she recalled.
“He made me convinced his hands were tied but that he was really worried about me. Family violence had only just got on people’s radars back then, 10 years ago, and when the senior constable said he had previously worked for the Heidelberg family violence unit for a stint, I thought he must know the system.”
Adams later messaged Amanda telling her he “had goss” when her ex-partner was arrested for beating up his new partner.
Then Adams’ messages started asking to catch up, that he wished he were in bed next to Amanda as she grappled with suicidal thoughts. The last message came in February 2021, two months before he was arrested.
“Happy birthday,” it said.
Amanda later faced court, telling a magistrate what had happened to her. While her allegations didn’t progress to the County Court, those relating to four other women did.
On Friday, the former senior constable was jailed for what a judge described as calculated, sexually motivated offending that eroded the trust of the community when it preyed on vulnerable women he met through work.
The court heard he’d been arrested with his pants almost down in a car at the You Yangs, near Geelong, with another family violence victim after meeting for sex on April 19, 2021.
“At the committal, he was looking at me the whole time. It felt like he made it go that far so he could see me again,” Amanda said.
“I was made out to be a slut, that I was seducing him.”
Adams, now 54, was a youth pastor in Shepparton and worked as a bank manager from 1989 to 2002, before studying religion and opening a Baptist church in Wallan. There, he had an affair with a parishioner which ended his marriage and his time as a senior pastor, working for a year in a factory before joining the police force in 2013.
Earlier this year, Adams pleaded guilty to four counts of misconduct in public office after other charges were withdrawn.
The court heard the 53-year-old worked as a senior constable at Corio police station between September 2020 and April 2021, when he attempted to engage in romantic and later sexual conduct with female victims who had come to his attention during family violence reports to his station.
A police investigation found Adams used the station’s computer system and later his personal mobile to contact four women, asking them if they wanted to have coffee.
While first offering to be a supportive person in their lives, he later went to their homes or met them in secluded areas including car parks, in what the prosecution said was an attempt to have sex with them.
An analysis of Adams’ mobile phone found he had saved the women’s names in his phone as real and fake police officers.
When one woman attended the police station to report an intervention order breach, Adams, while taking her report in a private room, told her he’d buy her a drink if he saw her at a nightclub, police investigators found.
He later showed up at the woman’s house on multiple occasions while on and off duty, sometimes with a junior colleague remaining in the police car while they spoke.
Adams, then aged 48, gave gifts including chocolates to another woman he met when responding to a family violence Triple Zero call, and later received oral sex from another.
A former colleague who worked with Adams at a Melbourne police station, who asked not to be named, said the predatory behaviour started years before Adams was caught.
As a junior constable at Epping, the former policeman said Adams ended up having an affair with the wife of a violent, outlaw bikie member.
“I don’t hate a lot of people but I hated that bloke, for no other reason than he had a facade on. He was opportunistic, just a creep,” the retired officer said.
“He was doing it at Epping and he knew it was wrong. There is no doubt in my mind if there was one [victim], there’s going to be 10 more victims.
“He targets vulnerable women. Comes in as a knight in shining armour, makes them think he’s their saviour, then subtly pushes for a relationship. He was hunting women.”
Another officer, not authorised to speak to the media, said Adams was known to loiter around the files office before his shift, actively asking to be given family violence intervention orders to serve.
This, they said, was unheard of in the police force.
“Now we see the last position he had, after leaving Victoria Police, was working for a church in Queensland, assisting people in need of housing. Who are the majority of those people going to be? Young single mothers,” the officer said.
During sentencing, his barrister said Adams no longer worked at the church and had returned to Victoria from Townsville to serve his sentence, leaving his wife and children up north.
The prosecution told the court the offending was serious, criminal, sexually motivated and predatory, leaving a profound impact on his victims.
They noted one woman had attended the police station to report a family violence incident, the second attended to report an intervention breach, the third had called Triple Zero during an incident and the fourth was a suspect of similar offending, with Adams sitting in on the police interview.
Judge Gerard Mullaly said brazen offending of this kind had a corrosive impact on the community’s efforts to deal with the scourge that is family violence.
He said the community at large suffered as a result of the grave offending, as do other police officers, with the vast majority doing a difficult job well and for the right reasons.
“This kind of selfish conduct … creates a sense that for victims of family violence, there is nowhere to go that will take seriously their complaints,” the judge said.
“The breach of trust to the victims and community is stark. It only really came to an end because you were caught.”
Mullaly noted that Adams was raised in a hardworking family with parents who were deeply committed members of the Baptist Church. After separating from his first wife, he remarried and his current wife remains supportive of him.
“As grave as it is to impose sentences of actual imprisonment on a person who was a police officer …. [it’s] what justice requires in this case,” he said.
Another woman told this masthead she went to report domestic violence to police and soon after was receiving messages from Adams on his personal phone.
Within weeks, he was sitting in a car in her driveway, revealing he’d previously been thrown out of the church.
“I was raised in the church. I saw someone who had a position of power, misused that, hurt multiple people, then found more and was looking to do the same again,” the woman said.
“This doesn’t just start happening at 48.
“I’m lucky I was older and a bit savvy, one of the other women was 21.”
Mullaly sentenced Adams to five months in jail with a 12-month community corrections order to follow. He must also perform 120 hours of community service once released.
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