Ex-London cop sentenced to life for dozens of rapes

Europe 1 with AFP 3:41 p.m., February 07, 2023

The case has aggravated the crisis of confidence that Scotland Yard is going through: a former London police officer, David Carrick, was sentenced in London to life imprisonment on Tuesday for dozens of rapes and sexual assaults on 12 women.

"You have taken monstrous advantage of women," Judge Bobbie Cheema-Grubb said before announcing the sentence.

"You behaved like you were untouchable," she continued.

"You joined the Metropolitan Police in 2001, which put you in a unique position with exceptional powers of coercion 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.

In the box, he kept his head down and his eyes closed throughout the reading of the judgment.

48 rapes between 2003 and 2020

He was being prosecuted for at least 85 offences, including 48 rapes, which occurred between 2003 and 2020. During part of this period, he was part of the capital's elite police unit in charge of the protection of Parliament and diplomatic representations.

The police missed nine opportunities to arrest this serial rapist who was able to rage for 17 years.

He was finally arrested in October 2021 for a first rape case, then other victims came forward.

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Having pleaded guilty, he did not have a trial as such, but two days of hearings on Monday and Tuesday to determine his sentence at Southwark Crown Court in London.

On Monday, the prosecutor delivered a harrowing account of the "systematic" attacks committed by David Carrick by taking up the story of his victims, vulnerable, whom he "humiliated".

He used his "charm" to "seduce and deceive" his victims, and his status to dissuade his victims from reporting his actions, explained prosecutor Tom Little.

To a woman he met in a bar in 2003, he introduced himself as "the safest person she could be with", according to the prosecutor, before placing his gun on her head and raping her several times.

Yet another recounted being beaten with a whip, locked in a cupboard and whistled like a dog, with Carrick treating her as his thing, which "belonged to him and had to obey him".

Their depositions tell how they felt "trapped" and the fact that they "no longer trust the police".

The Minister of the Interior calls on the police to clean up

The revelation of these rapes and assaults has sent new shock waves in the United Kingdom, less than two years after the case of Sarah Everard, a 33-year-old Londoner kidnapped, raped and killed by a police officer in the capital, since sentenced to life imprisonment.

London police renewed their apologies for the Carrick case on Sunday.

"He shouldn't have been a police officer," Assistant Commissioner Barbara Gray said, stressing Scotland Yard's determination to hunt "those who corrupt our integrity".

Interior Minister Suella Braverman has urged police forces to clean up their ranks to drive out "corrupt officers".

London police said 1,633 cases of alleged sexual assault or domestic violence involving more than 1,000 officers and constables over the past decade would be reviewed to ensure the appropriate decisions were made.

After the Sarah Everard scandal in March 2021, the police were criticized for ignoring alarming signals about the behavior of kidnapper, rapist and murderer Wayne Couzens.

The independent investigation opened after this affair was extended to the Carrick affair.