Steve Turner has spent the past three years painstakingly rebuilding his shattered life after being falsely accused of “systematic theft”, sexual abuse and punching a man at a pub.

The three separate anonymous allegations, all made in the space of eight weeks, destroyed the career of the Conservative former police and crime commissioner (PCC) for Cleveland and led to him to attempt to take his own life. He never knew how they started — he often did not even know he was being investigated. He was cleared of every one.

It was only after Turner, 53, used subject access requests to uncover documents about himself that he made a startling discovery.

The person at the heart of what he says became a “witch-hunt” was Andy McDonald, the local Labour MP and the man who first made the claims public.

Turner says the newly released documents show McDonald made repeated calls for his resignation without declaring his involvement in passing on the allegations in the first place.

He now wants the Labour Party and the parliamentary commissioners for standards to take action against the Middlesbrough & Thornaby East MP, who he says repeated false accusations about him without verifying them.

Turner, the former joint chief of staff to the Tory MPs Simon Clarke and Jacob Young, was elected PCC for Cleveland, which involves holding the police to account on behalf of the public, in May 2021.

But on July 31 that year, Cleveland police’s “break the silence” whistleblowing scheme received an anonymous allegation. An email disclosed as a result of a subject access request reveals the complainant alleged Turner had been sacked from a previous job for dishonesty.

An accuser in parliament

Turner was not told about the complaint at the time or that an internal review had been launched by Cleveland police. By August 10, he had been cleared because no record of any offence had been found.

Then, on September 20, 2021, McDonald stood up in parliament and said Turner “was sacked in the early 2000s for systematic theft of merchandise from his then employer, Safeway supermarket”.

McDonald, 67, who was shadow transport secretary under Jeremy Corbyn, was speaking in the Commons and so was protected by parliamentary privilege, meaning he could say what he liked without fear of being sued for defamation.

McDonald added that it was “untenable for someone who was engaged in such criminal behaviour to hold the position of PCC”.

Turner was astonished: he had no criminal convictions, though he had received a police caution more than 20 years earlier.

He once worked in a supermarket and claims to have been coerced into storing a few jars of coffee in the boot of his car. Another employee suspected they were stolen and called the police. When they questioned him, Turner refused to reveal who had given him the coffee for fear of repercussions. He accepted a police caution after being told that while the offence would be kept on file, it would be spent the moment he left the police station.

Turner says he immediately resigned from his job at the supermarket “out of embarrassment”, but went on to build a successful career in retail. He did not disclose the caution when he stood as Cleveland’s PCC because there was no legal obligation to do so under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act. The same rule applied throughout his career.

Turner put out a statement explaining the situation. McDonald did not correct his allegation and did not repeat it outside parliament.

Turner, who grew up in Dormanstown, on the outskirts of Redcar, said: “By making his statement in parliament, McDonald, a former solicitor, disregarded available mechanisms, such as the Independent Office for Police Conduct [IOPC] or Cleveland police, to verify any facts before making unsubstantiated claims. His actions were a misuse of [parliamentary] privilege, bypassing accountability for statements that would otherwise be defamatory.”

Nonetheless, a string of negative media stories followed.

The case of ‘Ms A’

Then, on September 23, 2021, another anonymous allegation was made about Turner to Richard Lewis, then chief constable of Cleveland police: that a “Ms A” had been sexually assaulted by Turner in 1987, when he would have been 15.

Lewis asked for the IOPC to investigate. Turner once again knew nothing about it.

In an email since disclosed by the subject access requests — requests that anyone can make for a copy of personal information stored or used by an organisation — Lewis told the monitoring officer of Cleveland’s Police and Crime Panel that he had found no evidence of the incident.

The force never spoke to Ms A but had to record the allegation as a report of a suspected crime, which Turner believes could be detrimental to any future work he may wish to do.

It was not until November 3 that Turner was told he was being investigated. Documents show that the person who passed details of the alleged sexual assault to Lewis was informed on the same day, just hours before the IOPC was contacted by the press for comment on the confidential investigation.

The following day a story about the investigation appeared in the Daily Mirror and was picked up by 38 other news outlets. Turner denied the allegation of sexual assault but again faced calls to resign. These were led by McDonald and Alex Cunningham, Labour MP for Stockton North.

Matthew Storey, the leader of Middlesbrough council’s Labour group, who had run against Turner to become Cleveland PCC, wrote a letter encouraging local council leaders to add their voices to demands for his resignation. Senior members of the shadow cabinet, including Rachel Reeves and Bridget Phillipson, also called for Turner to quit. Sir Keir Starmer called for him to stand down while the investigation was carried out.

Turner, who is married to Andrea and has three adult sons and two grandchildren, recalls: “Once the story had been published, it destroyed my reputation overnight, and the weight of the public scrutiny was unbearable. Having my name dragged through the media alongside such heinous, false allegations caused distress, anxiety and humiliation, which impacted on both my mental and physical wellbeing.”

Claim of a pub punch-up

Five days later, on November 8, 2021, the chief constable of Cleveland received another anonymous allegation — this time that Turner had punched a pensioner in a pub in 2019, long before becoming Cleveland’s police and crime commissioner.

Neither the police nor the IOPC found any evidence that it was true. Again, however, the media found out about the accusation, and it was only when a story was about to be published, on December 2, that Turner was told about it.

By now, Turner had become increasingly isolated. He was referred to in the media as “embattled” and “scandal-ridden”.

Then, on February 7, 2022, McDonald stood up in parliament again. “A woman has approached me for help,” he told MPs. “She tells me that, as a teenager, she was raped, and has lived with the trauma for over 30 years. She has no confidence or trust in the police or the criminal justice system. She feels intimidated and frightened by her attacker to this day and fears that she will not be listened to, taken seriously, or protected.”

Turner said this was the moment “alarm bells began ringing”. Although he had not been named by McDonald, the similarity to the Ms A allegation, such as the date the assault was supposed to have happened, and the fact the MP had previously made claims about him in parliament, made him suspicious.

He began gathering evidence relating to his case. In May 2022, the IOPC dropped its investigation into the sexual assault without ever interviewing him. It stated that the investigating officer never knew the identity of Ms A.

By now, Turner and his family were receiving menacing anonymous phone calls and had to install extra security at home. In February 2023, unable to cope with the way he was being portrayed in the media, he tried to take his own life.

Turner, who was later diagnosed with PTSD, said: “I just thought everyone would be better off without me. My reputation was in tatters, even though I had never even been questioned and had certainly never done anything wrong. I was vilified and suffered from severe depression with nowhere to turn.”

My reputation was in tatters. I had never even been questioned

Andrea barely left his side during this period, fearing “every day could be his last”. “It was torture,” she added.

Finally, as he recovered, Turner began to receive the evidence that shows how McDonald had passed on two of the anonymous complaints to the authorities. The first was about the pub incident.

A redacted email shows it was McDonald who initially emailed the chief constable about the allegation. The email, whose subject line is “Mr Turner”, is clearly from the account of Andy McDonald. It said a matter had been brought to the MP’s attention concerning PCC Steve Turner that involved an alleged incident in 2019 in the Starting Gate pub in Redcar.

In the message, McDonald said the person making the complaint wished to remain anonymous but had sent him an email in which it was claimed: “At the Starting gate (pub) in 2019 ... [redacted]. This is when it began ... [Redacted] had terminal cancer (died last year). Steve thumped him in a rage of temper.”

Then in September last year, a letter from the IOPC revealed by the requests showed that McDonald and Storey, the Middlesbrough Labour group leader, had been the people who had passed the Ms A allegation to the police. It also revealed that no contact had ever been made with Ms A, despite various attempts to get in touch with her. The letter, which examined the conduct of the two men, made clear that both may simply have been trying to do the right thing.

The letter explained: “Given that Mr McDonald (and therefore Mr Storey) claim that Ms A provided them with the information on condition of anonymity that she was not identified, they would always have the ‘lawful excuse’ that they believed the allegations to be credible and were acting in the public interest by taking such information as they did have to the police, but were unable to persuade Ms A to speak directly to the police because of Mr Turner’s position as the PCC.”

What this meant, however, was that McDonald had repeatedly called for Turner to resign without declaring he was the person who had originally passed on the allegation.

Sting in the tail

In May last year, Turner lost his campaign to be re-elected police and crime commissioner for Cleveland. Incredibly, the victor in the election was Storey, who was also McDonald’s office manager. Storey campaigned on a platform of bringing “integrity back to the role of Cleveland’s PCC”.

Since then, Turner has tried to raise McDonald’s behaviour with the prime minister and Sir Alan Campbell, Labour’s chief whip. He has submitted formal complaints to the parliamentary commissioner for standards and to the Labour Party. So far he has heard nothing.

Turner said: “I am not just the victim of false allegations; I’m the victim of a system that allowed fabricated stories to be weaponised against me. The damage done can never fully be undone but we refuse to be silenced and will continue to fight for justice, not just for myself but to ensure that no one else endures the same suffering.”

A spokesman for the parliamentary commissioners for standards said: “This office does not comment on the conduct of individual MPs outside of the information published on our website.”

A Labour source said: “We received a complaint from Mr Turner. No evidence was provided to substantiate his claims or demonstrate any potential contravention of the Labour Party’s rules. We have informed Mr Turner of the outcome of our assessment of his complaint.”

McDonald and Storey were contacted but declined to comment.

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