When a stranger complimented Catherine Dobson on her beautiful smile during a supermarket shopping trip, she was naturally flattered.
But the 40-year-old divorcee thought little more about it until she bumped into the same man, Michael Harvey, in the same Asda car park five months later.
This time, she wondered, maybe fate was knocking at her door.
During that second meeting, the tall, smart 51-year-old turned on the charm, telling Catherine he worked as a police detective and requesting her number so he could take the single mother-of-two out for a drink.
‘As the conversation went on, he said: “I let you walk away last time and I’ve been kicking myself ever since”,’ she says. ‘It sounds really cheesy now, but in that moment I was flattered.
‘At that time, I was divorced, it was me and the kids against the world, I really wasn’t looking (for a partner).
‘I thought, “What’s the harm?” He was a police officer, I knew he would have been DBS checked, so I thought I would be safe to give him my number.’
Catherine Dobson, 54, was ‘tricked’ into a relationship with ‘pathological liar’ police detective Michael Harvey, 65Â
Looking back now, Catherine believes that second meeting with Harvey, whose name she can no longer bear to say out loud, was no chance encounter.
Because unbeknown to her, after first spotting her in the aisles, in May 2012, the married father-of-three watched her walk to her car and jotted down her registration plate, which he looked up on the police national computer at work, in the Sexual Offenders’ Management Unit of Lancashire Constabulary, later that day.
He was checking, it later emerged, whether there was a male named driver on her car insurance. Or, to put it another way, investigating whether she was single and a potential target for his womanising ways.
This shocking detail was revealed earlier this month at Preston Crown Court when Harvey, now 65, was jailed for two and a half years after pleading guilty to controlling and coercive behaviour and misuse of police systems.
The judge told him he had ‘tricked’ Catherine, then a BBC radio coordinator, into a relationship from the start and ‘toyed’ with her emotions, repeatedly threatening to kill himself before she finally grew tired of his lies and dialled 999 so his own police colleagues could help her evict him from her home four years later.
Those lies, which included that he was separated from his wife and mother of his three sons; was teetotal; was being tested for a rare form of cancer; had post-traumatic stress from helping rescue victims of the Boxing Day tsunami in Sri Lanka, and, most horrifying, that he’d had been sexually abused as a child, Catherine admits, with hindsight, read like something out of a Hollywood fantasy.
Fall from grace: A police mugshot of Harvey, who was jailed for two and a half years after admitting misuse of police systems and controlling and coercive behaviour. He retired from Lancashire Constabulary in 2018Â
Judge Andrew Jeffries KC told Harvey (pictured in 2015) that he had caused ‘significant psychological harm and very serious distress’ to his victim
It took her more than a decade to come to terms with the fact that, in reality, Harvey was a drunk and a married man, who told her ‘lie on lie on lie’ to inveigle his way into her life, home and bed.
By the end, in July 2016, the ‘harm’ Harvey had caused with his psychological abuse was so great that, Catherine, now 54, admits she was a ‘broken’ woman.
She was waking up struggling to breathe, having nose bleeds in her sleep, and had been turned into such a ‘non-person’ that, she says, she had no energy left to fight off Harvey, who was also physically stronger, when he demanded sex.
But, although he admitted faking the cancer, the childhood abuse and exaggerating his mental health problems in court, Harvey denied rape and Catherine was left ‘devastated’ when he was cleared by a jury following a four-day trial in November.
Speaking exclusively to the Daily Mail, she describes Harvey as a ‘master manipulator’ who abused his position as a police officer to seduce her, before ruining her mentally, physically and financially.
‘On that first date, when he told me he worked on the Sex Offenders’ Unit I thought you couldn’t get anyone safer than a man who was paid to protect women and children,’ she says.
‘But he lied about everything – he is a master manipulator. At times he was very charming, he was kind, he was considerate, he would go out of his way to check my car or to cook us food.
‘Other times, he was totally and utterly a monster. He has a Jekyll and Hyde character. I would never have entertained the man I ended up with if he had shown his true colours in the beginning.’
Catherine, who has agreed to waive her legal right to anonymity, says she wants to speak out to warn and educate other women about the ‘red flags’ she missed when Harvey swept into her life.
‘Women need to know that these men don’t come with horns,’ she says. ‘They don’t look like baddies.
‘They look like reasonable, decent fellas and they treat you kindly in the early days, it’s insidious what they do.
‘The control he had over me was so damaging, I didn’t know what was up and what was down. It removed my ability to make rational decisions and to consent.’
But during the first few months of her relationship with Harvey, everything was ‘good’ and he acted like the ‘perfect’ gentleman, Catherine says.
Their dates mainly consisted of going for walks and bike rides together or chatting on the telephone.
However, as the months went on, she began to feel uncomfortable that he hadn’t introduced her to his children, or any other relatives and friends, and was reluctant for her to post pictures of them together on social media.
Each time she challenged Harvey, he came up with ‘plausible’ excuses, claiming the timing wasn’t right or that he was concerned the dangerous offenders he dealt with at work might see her on Facebook.
Around 18 months into their relationship, however, Catherine decided she had had enough of him having ‘one foot’ in their relationship.
By this time, Harvey had started drinking and was off work sick, claiming traumatic events he witnessed with his job had caused him to feel depressed and suffer mentally.
When, Catherine says, she decided to ask him to hand back the key she’d given him to her home, in Rossendale, Lancashire, it ‘triggered’ a ‘big lie’ – that he had been sexually abused as a child by a family friend – and she was ‘pulled back in’.
‘The lie was so big I didn’t question it,’ she says. ‘Who would think someone would make something like that up?
‘At the time I was trying to help him mentally and I thought I loved him, so he pulled me back in.’
The relationship continued but Harvey started being secretive with his mobile phone and Catherine suspected he was messaging other women.
Again, when she questioned him, he had an explanation, saying they were victims of crime, who had low self-esteem and he was supporting through his job.
To deflect Catherine’s attention again, he made up another lie, claiming he was being tested for a rare type of cancerous tumour in his nose. In truth, there was no cancer and the hospital appointments he attended were for an operation to remove harmless nasal polyps.
Another year went by and, although Catherine admits they still had some good times together, Harvey’s presence at her home caused ongoing problems, especially with her children who didn’t approve of the relationship. She now believes he was intentionally trying to drive a wedge between them.
Despite receiving 90 per cent of his wage while off sick, Harvey also lied to Catherine saying he had no money to pay her rent, forcing her to dip into her savings to make ends meet.
Then, in the summer of 2015, things came to a head when Harvey’s mental health deteriorated further and he told Catherine he’d worked out how to end his own life.
‘He told me he knew how much rope he needed to hang himself from my loft hatch,’ she says.
‘I was beside myself with worry. It got to the point where I was terrified that if I said or did something wrong then I would be responsible, and his children would be left without a dad.
‘The threat of suicide was the biggest controller he used, I felt if I threw him out, he would kill himself.’
But, by September that year, Catherine had had enough and she told Harvey that if their relationship was to survive he had to move out. That day, however, he called her at work to say the only place he was going ‘was where there were no men or women’.
Panicking that he was going to kill himself, she dialled 999, prompting police to be scrambled to her home.
When they arrived, Harvey had put keys in the locks so no one could get in, then opened the door claiming there was nothing wrong, making Catherine ‘appear like a hysterical woman’, she says.
She was so worried about his mental state that she gave him another chance, until a disastrous family holiday to Menorca the following June steeled her resolve to get rid of him for good.
Even then, Harvey refused to go, barricading himself into her bedroom which forced her to call police.
Eventually, after a five-hour stand-off, officers from his own force removed him from the property, and she changed the locks.
Harvey was later made the subject of an harassment order, but still he pestered Catherine with phone calls until, more than six years later, in July 2022, she eventually found the courage to report him.
While she has nothing but praise for the individual officers that helped secure Harvey’s conviction, she is angry with Lancashire Police for ‘enabling’ his behaviour and failing to stop him sooner.
The Mail can reveal that, during the case it emerged that another woman, who doesn’t want to be named, had reported Harvey for abusing his role as a police officer in July 2011, around 10 months before he and Catherine met.
The other woman worked in a prison and Harvey, of Skelmersdale, Lancashire, was sent to take her police statement after she was threatened by an inmate.
Using an almost identical modus operandi, he told her he was single, persuaded her to go for a drink to discuss her case and obtained her personal mobile phone number, before seducing her, moving himself into her home and making up fictitious health problems when she tried to end their nine-month relationship.
He was also the subject of a harassment complaint at work, in 2014, the Mail understands.
Catherine, who has also lodged a formal complaint with Lancashire Police, says she is ‘absolutely furious’ that Harvey was never disciplined or fired for his behaviour. He eventually retired, with his full pension, in 2018.
‘He could have been stopped,’ she says. ‘The police knew he had done it to someone else and that he had looked me up on the police computer, but he kept his job.
‘If they had taken him off that unit in 2011 – or sacked him – I would never have met him, he wouldn’t have been able to tell me he was a detective and my children and I wouldn’t have suffered.’
A spokesman for Lancashire Police confirmed their professional standards department were investigating but said it would be ‘inappropriate to comment at this stage’.