Victims of black cab rapist Worboys were failed by police, rules Supreme Court
The Black Cab rapist's first victim tells Sky News he could have been stopped if police believed her in 2003.
Thursday 22 February 2018 09:11, UK
Scotland Yard did fail two victims in its flawed investigation into black cab rapist John Worboys, the Supreme Court has ruled.
The court has thrown out an appeal by the Metropolitan Police, the third time the force has lost the case.
Judges agreed that the force was liable to the victims, both of whom said detectives had not believed them when they reported the rapes.
One victim was raped six years before Worboys was caught, but Worboys was never identified as a suspect.
He was arrested after the rape of the second victim in 2007, but the investigation was dropped even though he was seen with her on CCTV.
Worboys was not arrested until a year later and eventually jailed indefinitely with a minimum of eight years.
The women, who cannot be identified, had already won their case at the High Court and the Appeal Court and been awarded £40,000 compensation between them.
The first women he raped, who has a right to remain anonymous, told Sky News: "The bottom line is, if the police had believed me in 2003 then there would only be one victim of Worboys.
"I've always brought this case for the other women because what's happened to me has happened, you can't go back in history and you can't change things.
"But it's really really important to me because I felt I'd failed all those women, I don't want to feel like I've failed all these other women."
The case centred on to what extent Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights ("No one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment") imposes an obligation on states effectively to investigate reported crimes perpetrated by private individuals.
Metropolitan Police accepted it had an obligation to have proper investigative structures, but argued it was not liable for the conduct of individual investigations.
:: Worboys victims win bid to challenge his release in judicial review
It said, effectively, it could not be held liable for crimes committed by other people.
The court's decision appears to set a new principle and could open the floodgates for compensation claims over other negligent serious crime investigations.
"There is no doubt that it will have implications for how we resource and prioritise our investigations," said Scotland Yard deputy commissioner Craig Mackey.
Lord Kerr gave the main judgment in the case on Wednesday morning, saying: "The Supreme Court unanimously dismisses the Commissioner's appeal.
"There was disagreement between us as to whether liability under the Human Rights Act arose only where there had been systematic failures or whether deficiencies in the actual investigation would be enough to make the police liable.
"By a majority, we have held that failures in the investigations of crimes, provided they are sufficiently serious, will give rise to liability on the part of the police.
"There were such serious deficiencies in this case."
One of the two victims of Worboys who brought the legal action said: "I'm a bit speechless at the moment. It's not really sunk in - a bit of an emotional day...
"The (police) have finally got to start doing their job... You have the procedures in place, you had everything there, start doing your job, stop using public money to fight something like this.
"Had you done your job properly there wouldn't be 105 victims - there would have been one."
Human rights campaign group Liberty, one of the organisations that intervened in the case, said the outcome was a "fantastic victory".