A FORMER police officer filmed himself having sex with women he met on a dating website without their knowledge or consent, a jury was told.

Liverpool Crown Court heard how Jayson Lobo, 47, of Woodfold Park, Mellor, told the victims he met on Match.com that he was a serving policeman and would often use handcuffs on the women while they engaged in private acts.

The court heard Lobo, who denies 18 counts of voyeurism against eight women, created 'secure vault' folders on three mobile phones where he stored explicit photographs and videos of his alleged victims.

Prosecuting, Martine Snowdon said Lobo, who used to work as a response officer in Preston but also had stints in Burnley, Colne and Haslingden, kept the 'portfolio' of images and videos for his own gratification.

Ms Snowdon said only one of Lobo's alleged victims had gone to the police and that the other seven only became aware the material existed when they were contacted by officers who were attempting to identify them from the footage.

Lobo, a middle distance runner who represented England at the 1998 Commonwealth Games, was also alleged to have sent a text to one victim threatening to send some of the compromising images to her students on social media.

Ms Snowdon said: "The prosecution say Jayson Lobo secretly filmed eight women that he was engaged in sexual relationships with.

"It was his intention in capturing that moment to create it for his own purposes to look at in the future. To do so would have provided him some sort of sexual gratification.

"Over a number of years he built up a portfolio of photographs and images, which he managed to obtain in the course of sexual relationships with different women without ever asking the permission of the women involved.

"Almost exclusively he managed to take the picture or the footage without the female being aware of it."

The court heard the offences were alleged to have happened between December 2011 and May 2015 and that Lobo met all but one of his alleged victims on the dating website where he often lied about his age.

His alleged offending only came to light in May 2015 when one women noticed the red light illuminated on the defendant's iPhone and realised he was filming her.

The court heard she asked him to delete the footage and he allegedly told her he had.

In a separate incident the same woman noticed Lobo photographing her performing a private act in a blue dress while he was making a phone call.

When she asked him to delete it, the court heard Lobo allegedly told her she had given 'complied consent' because she had seen him taking them and hadn't said anything at the time.

The court heard that relationship broke down when the victim discovered he was having an affair.

In September 2015, the prosecution said the alleged victim's mother messaged Lobo threatening to send photographs of her daughter and the defendant together to the woman he was having an affair with.

In response Lobo was alleged to have threatened to send a photograph to her students with her 'in that blue dress'.

The court heard that Lobo had secured the 'vault folder' with a four-digit code, which he denied to the police. The only way to by-pass the code was with an iTunes encryption, which Lobo also told police he did not know.

The court heard the phones eventually had to be sent off to experts who discovered the encrypted password was the same he used on other devices.

The prosecution said when they eventually gained access to the folder, officers had to go about the process of identifying and contacting the other alleged victims.

Ms Snowdon said another of Lobo's alleged victims described herself being in love with him and said he was her first sexual partner, while the third said the police's contact had come 'completely out of the blue'.

Another victim said she had sent Lobo photographs of herself in her underwear but there was never a discussion about filming or photographing private moments.

The court heard another victim said she did not want to watch the footage to identify herself, so police had to identify her via a dress she was wearing.

Lobo did not deny that he had photographed and recorded the victims but said he had not done it for sexual gratification.

Ms Snowdon told the jury he will say that he had either discussed recording or photographing the women prior to their sexual encounters, but in cases where he hadn't he had positioned the phone camera in such a way that the victims knew they were being filmed. And because none of them had complained at the time he assumed 'complied consent'. He will also say he deleted photographs when asked.

The trial continues.