A POLICE Community Support Officer from Stevenage has been jailed for laundering cash made at a brothel run by his wife.

Sean Griffin, 44, of York Road, was jailed for nine months on Friday at Cambridge Crown Court, after pleading guilty to converting the criminal proceedings of a brothel in Brent Court, Stevenage.

His wife Debbie, also 44, was given a 16-month sentence after pleading guilty to running the brothel at the two-bed flat rented by her husband.

Mrs Griffin, who used the working name Kim, was caught with another woman and four clients in a raid on the flat in July last year. A menu of sexual favours and price list was on the wall.

A simultaneous raid on the defendants’ home revealed diaries going back four years with names of prostitutes, clients’ visits and payments. A computer showed a website was being built to advertise the services.

The court heard how Debbie Griffin had 17 women working for her and had her own clients. In the two years to July 2010 she made �176,000 with a profit of �116,000. The money was used to pay off the couple’s mortgage.

Judge Gareth Hawkesworth said: “I accept there was no intimidation and no trafficked girls working for you. It was, if I may say so, a very English enterprise, but regrettably a criminal one and a profitable one.”

He added that the former PCSO, who has been sacked by the Metropolitan Police, had paid the �655 rent on the flat with money paid into his bank account from his wife’s business.

“You abrogated your responsibility as a law abiding member of the community and abrogated your responsibility as a husband and failed to stand up to Mrs Griffin and then took the benefits for a substantial period of time,” he said.

“I note from references that you are a weak man who avoids confrontation but what’s entirely clear is in fact that Mrs Griffin is a strong willed woman, far from the vulnerable person she portrays herself – in short, as you say, she does as she wants.”

Debbie Griffin had worked as a prostitute until meeting Sean in 1992, stopped for a time, but returned to it when they were in financial difficulties, the court heard.

In mitigation for Debbie Griffin, Rizwan Ashiq said she had worked in the flat alone for two years and hadn’t intended to run a brothel until she was approached by “mature working girls”. He added that she was now working as a cleaner, had joined a church choir and was doing charity work.

Judge Hawkesworth ordered a proceeds of crime application hearing to force the couple to pay back the financial gains from the racket.