The case has aggravated the crisis of confidence that Scotland Yard is going through: a former London police officer, David Carrick, was sentenced this Tuesday in London to life imprisonment for dozens of rapes and sexual assaults on twelve women.
“He has taken monstrous advantage of women,” Judge Bobbie Cheema-Grubb said before announcing the sentence. “You acted like you were untouchable,” he continued. “You joined the Metropolitan Police in 2001, which put you in a unique position with exceptional powers of enforcement and control.”
Considered one of the worst sexual predators in recent UK history, David Carrick, 48, was sentenced to life in prison with a 30-year security period. On the stand, he kept his head bowed and his eyes closed throughout the sentencing.
At least 85 crimes between 2003 and 2020
He was being prosecuted for at least 85 crimes, including 48 rapes, that occurred between 2003 and 2020. During part of that period, he was part of the capital’s elite police unit in charge of protecting Parliament and diplomatic missions. Police missed nine chances to arrest this serial rapist who was able to rage for 17 years. He was finally arrested in October 2021 for a first case of rape, then other victims came forward.
Having pleaded guilty, he had no trial as such, but two days of hearings on Monday and Tuesday to determine his sentence at Southwark Crown Court in London.
heartbreaking stories
On Monday, the prosecutor gave a harrowing account of the “systematic” attacks committed by David Carrick by taking up the account of his vulnerable victims, whom he “humiliated”. He used his “charm” to “seduce and deceive” his victims, and his status to discourage his victims from coming forward, prosecutor Tom Little explained.
To a woman he met in a bar in 2003, he presented himself as “the safest person I could be with”, according to the prosecutor, before putting the gun to her head and raping her several times. Another recounted being beaten with a whip, locked in a cupboard and hissed at like a dog, and Carrick treating her as his own, “belonging to him and having to obey him”. His statements tell how they felt “trapped” and the fact that “they no longer trust the police.”
Shock wave
The revelation of these rapes and assaults has sent new shock waves through the UK, less than two years after the case of Sarah Everard, a 33-year-old Londoner kidnapped, raped and murdered by a police officer in the capital, since she was sentenced. . to life imprisonment London police renewed their apologies for the Carrick case on Sunday. “I shouldn’t have been a police officer,” said Deputy Commissioner Barbara Gray, underlining Scotland Yard’s determination to hunt down “those who corrupt our integrity.”
Interior Minister Suella Braverman has urged police forces to clean up their ranks to expel “corrupt agents”. London police said 1,633 cases of alleged sexual assault or domestic violence involving more than 1,000 officers and bailiffs over the past decade would be reviewed to ensure appropriate decisions were made.
Following the Sarah Everard scandal in March 2021, police came under fire for ignoring alarming signs about the behavior of kidnapper, rapist and murderer Wayne Couzens. The independent investigation opened after this matter was extended to the Carrick case.
Source: BFM TV
