From as far back as 2002, victims described being attacked in the back of his vehicle. Yet nothing was done until 2007, when he was arrested, questioned, and released without charge. His victim, a 19-year old, has described how the police laughed at her when she told them about her injuries. It was the same story for all those other women who had flagged down Worboys’ cab after a night out assuming they’d be safe in his black cab. Investigating officers generally presumed the women were drunk, incapable and unreliable. The victims were blamed and the cabbie allowed to drive on.

Shocking new light on this cascade of police failures is laid out in Predator: Catching The Black Cab Rapist, a Channel 5 documentary airing tonight. Among other grim revelations, is the recording of a police interview with Worboys following that complaint in 2007. Officers can be heard bantering with the cab driver rather than interrogating him. Laughing and joking with him, they appear to be helping him construct a defence to the woman’s allegations of drug-assisted rape. One even says: “I thought maybe she’s sort of come a bit undone at the front when you was helping her …”

In turn, the victim, during her questioning, was made to feel like she “deserved it”.

It was only the following year, after a pattern was finally noticed amid all these reports, that Worboys was properly interrogated and, at last, charged with several assaults. Then, in March 2009, Worboys was convicted of one count of rape, five sexual assaults, one attempted assault and 12 drugging charges. He had pleaded not guilty, and still shows no remorse for his crimes.

The civil case against the Metropolitan Police brought by two of Worboys victims found that there were “serious operational failures” during the investigation. The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) report into the investigation was a critical opportunity to bring about change in police culture. But all that was recommended in terms of sanctions were “words of warning” for some officers.

It’s an appalling example of poor policing. But you would have thought, wouldn’t you, that 12 years after Worboys was finally convicted, the force might have got their house in order? Sadly, I think that, if anything, things have got worse. The police have a consistently pitiful record when it comes to dealing with violence towards women, and their excessive reaction to the Sarah Everard protests the other weekend does little to dispel the feeling that perhaps they are part of the problem.

Between 2012 and 2018 across England and Wales, almost 1,500 complaints were filed against police officers, special constables and police community support officers (PCSOs) across 33 forces involving accusations of sexual misconduct, including sexual harassment, exploitation of crime victims and child abuse. These officers and special constables, remember, do swear an oath to “cause the peace to be kept and preserved and prevent all offences against people…”

Of these cases, 371 were upheld, resulting in the sacking or resignation of 197 individuals. One case involved a Devon and Cornwall officer, who was sacked following accusations that he attended a victim’s address, stripped off uninvited, and joined her in the shower.

Another is that of Peter Bunyan, a PSCO based in Penzance, who was convicted of three rapes and one count of sexual assault against two victims in 2016 and jailed for 16 years. Bunyan had previously spent time in prison after being convicted of having sex with domestic violence victims and a woman with mental health difficulties while on duty.

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The police have a woman problem

By Sarah Ditum

In data published in the Observer, figures from the Royal College of Policing’s current “barred list” – officers who have been dismissed from a force and are banned from joining another – show that nearly a fifth of offences inlude abuse of position for sexual purposes, domestic violence or harassment against the public and colleagues. Of the 555 officers barred since the list was introduced in December 2017, more than 1,100 reasons for dismissal are listed of which more than 200 involve sexual, harassment or domestic abuse offences.

Figures obtained under the Freedom of Information Act in 2019 show that police officers are seven times more likely than doctors or teachers to be dismissed for sexual misconduct. Now this is, admittedly, a small percentage of the service — but this is only the visible part. Police action lawyers will tell you that vulnerable victims rarely follow through on a complaint against a police officer, and rarer still that such complaints are held up by the courts.

I have interviewed several women over the years who have reported being asked out on dates, or just blatantly for sex, by the police they have called out to a domestic violence or rape complaint. I have also heard far too many stories from women in prostitution about police sexually assaulting them during an arrest, or asking for “sexual favours” in return for letting them go free. And I will never forget observing a rape trial and overhearing the police officers in the case joking outside the court about the “sexual positions” the victim must have enjoyed during the attack. Last week, one young officer shared an internet joke of a similar ilk with his colleagues, as the search for Sarah Everard’s body continued.

Not long after a serving police officer was charged with Sarah’s murder, Oliver Banfield, a probationary police officer based in the West Midlands was given a non-custodial sentence and ordered to pay just £500 compensation having been found guilty of a violent assault on a woman walking home following a night out.

Banfield was seen on CCTV shouting “slag” at Homer as he wrestled her to the ground using police training techniques. Homer, who suffers depression and panic attacks as a result of the attack says it was though Banfield was “fulfilling a violent cop movie fantasy”.

The attack took place in July 2020 but Banfield was allowed to continue to work as a police officer until he was sentenced. Police took eight weeks to follow up on the report about one of their own colleagues and to visit the scene of the crime. It was left to the victim to persevere with her request to have access to the CCTV footage which police had failed to do. As Homer commented after the sentencing, “It was like I had reported a missing cat.”

And, so, public confidence in the police when it comes to sexual and domestic abuse is at an all-time low. Women just don’t trust them. Earlier this month, the Centre for Women’s Justice (CWJ) lodged a super-complaint to the Police Inspectorate highlighting systemic failures women are experiencing when reporting domestic abuse perpetrated by police officers. Officers, it is alleged, manipulate the system and act in bad faith.

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This tendency is underlined by Nogah Ofer from CWJ, who describes the prevalence of certain behaviours within the Service as springing from a “locker-room culture” in which violence against women is trivialised and loyalty towards fellow officers and concern about impact on their careers are paramount. The Centre has been contacted, for example, by almost 50 women who say they have been seriously betrayed by those tasked with protecting them when they reported domestic abuse and sexual offences committed by police officers and staff. These cases are currently being investigated by the same police force that employs the accused officer.

The rape conviction rate, meanwhile, is stuck at an all time low. It might as well — and I am beginning to sound like a stuck record now — be decriminalised. In an attempt to correct this, in 2018, Met Commissioner Cressida Dick announced that the police had decided to abandon its policy of automatically believing those who report sexual assault.

The “I believe you” policy had been introduced in 2011 in response to low conviction rates. It was a simple way to reassure victims that they would not be automatically accused of lying — something which had been exposed in the 1982 film A complaint of rape. This fly-on-the-wall documentary by Roger Graef film featured a woman with a history of psychiatric illness being bullied and cajoled by a bunch of male officers as she tried to report a rape. They dismissed her story as “the biggest bollocks” they had ever heard. The screening of the film triggered a change in British law and a more sensitive approach to rape cases.

However, three years ago, Dick dismantled that in favour of the “open mind” approach. It was in response to a series of high-profile failed cases, including the Carl Beech fraud. But Dick also said at the time: “If [the allegation] is a long time ago, or it’s very trivial, or I’m not likely to get a criminal justice outcome, I’m not going to spend a lot of resources on it.”

In other words, this pretty much gave police licence to disregard those cases in which a woman may have been previously sexually active with the accused, or had been drinking, or had dared to dress as she wished. Naturally, it had little effect on the conviction rate. It just shifted the blame back on to the victims.

But as a shadow report on rape compiled by a number of leading women’s organisations found last year, to address that extremely low rate, no new laws or policy are necessary, rather police officers need to up their game under the existing framework. It was a lack of training, persistent sexist attitudes from officers, and a failure to hold police accountable which led to those endless blunders in relation to Worboys and similar cases, not the law as it stands. And this still hasn’t been addressed.

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Right now, as this shocking documentary airs, it feels like things are getting worse for women. The CWJ is contacted by a constant stream of women who report drug-assisted rapes, which never progress to the “risk averse” CPS. Calls to Refuge during lockdown have been up by an appalling 60%. And now our streets don’t even feel particularly safe, as all those women last weekend were protesting. The police are seen to be very much part of the problem.

Which leaves women in a pretty desperate position. Worboys may be set to spend a while yet in jail but there are many other predatory men out there getting away with it. And unless there is a radical shift in that locker-room culture, and accountability and how women are dealth with, those men will continue to feel as invincible as the black cab rapist

Except, of course, it turned out to be nonsense: for 2006-2008, the conviction rates for Snaresbrook and Kingston were within 1% of each other, either side of the national average of 63.9%. I suspect that this did little to dent the audience’s confidence in one of the profession’s most dearly held beliefs: arch references to Kingston juries still abound in London’s robing rooms.

But this was not the only surprise Professor Thomas delivered. The evidence, which came from analysis of over half a million criminal charges as well as a randomised trial with real jurors, strongly supported the proposition that white juries do not discriminate against black defendants. Indeed, it even appeared that a white defendant accused of a racially motivated crime is more likely to be convicted by a white jury than by a racially mixed one.

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Those findings do not, of course, call into question the unfairnesses suffered by the non-white population upstream of trial — if anything they could be said to emphasise them, given that non-white people are over-represented in prisons. But they did allay the fears expressed in the Auld report of 2001, which made a recommendation (not subsequently implemented) that “Provision should be made to enable ethnic minority representation on juries where race is likely to be relevant to an important issue in the case”. Whether the findings have entrenched themselves in the public consciousness more generally, however, is another matter.

Last month, Professor Thomas — now an honorary QC — published the results of a new study, commissioned by the senior judiciary to investigate “rape myths”. Her conclusions are thoroughly at odds with received wisdom.

The idea that many people — and therefore many jurors — hold seriously wayward beliefs about this uniquely enraging crime is not new, and has solidified in recent years. It first became common in the early 2000s for judges to warn juries to approach with caution defence counsel’s arguments about, for instance, a lack of physical violence, or a delay in making a report. Such warnings were swiftly approved by the Court of Appeal and found their way into the “Bench Book” — the judges’ bible of approved jury directions.

The need for these warnings arose from a developing understanding that inaccurate assumptions about how rape allegations should be analysed are widespread among the public. The 2010 Bench Book pointed to “research by those who are expert in the subject”, much of which derived its data from surveys. One cited author concluded that “the crucial determinant of judgments about rape cases is the extent to which people subscribe to rape myths. Thus it tends to be attitudes rather than an unbiased evaluation of the facts which determine judgments in these cases.”

And that message has grown louder in the decade since. In 2018 End Violence Against Women (EVAW) commissioned a YouGov poll and reported that “33% think that sex which happens without consent, but where there is no physical violence, isn’t really rape.” Horrifying to think that any jurors have that attitude, let alone a full third of them. No wonder, then, that judicial warnings have become more robust.

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For example, on the question of inconsistencies (which is of course a way to get purchase on the evidence in any trial) 2010’s bench book includes the following direction for sexual offences: “The experience of the courts is that it is unwise to approach the issue of inconsistency with the assumption that a true account is always consistent, or that an inconsistent account is always untrue. It depends on the circumstances and the individual.” And concludes with, “If…you are sure that the essential parts of the complainant’s account are true, you will no doubt act on that conclusion. But, if you are left in doubt about the truthfulness of the complainant’s account, because the inconsistencies cannot be satisfactorily explained, you must find the defendant Not Guilty.”

Fair enough. But the equivalent part of the 2020 version runs as follows: “Experience has shown that inconsistencies in accounts can happen whether a person is telling the truth or not”. And the line about doubt arising from inconsistencies that can’t be satisfactorily explained has disappeared.

Now, these are only short extracts, and much of the thrust is between-the-lines and therefore open to debate. But these warnings are not there primarily to help the defence. Some of them are felt to amount to a nudge in the other direction. Which might be fair — desperately needed even — if jurors believe rape myths. But it now looks like they don’t.

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We might as well decriminalise rape

By Julie Bindel

The UCL Jury Project surveyed almost 800 recently discharged jurors and found that “hardly any jurors believe what are often referred to as widespread myths and stereotypes about rape and sexual assault”. They don’t believe that rape must leave bruises, that a victim will always fight back, that dressing “provocatively” is inviting an assault, or that rapes will always be swiftly reported. But haven’t previous studies repeatedly found the precise opposite?

The reason for the disparity, the Professor suggests, is that her study involved actual jurors rather than members of the public. The jurors had heard trials of non-sexual as well as sexual offences, and of those approached 99% agreed to participate, which means a very low risk of selection bias. Something may be happening, she says, when a member of the public actually goes through the solemn process of sitting on a jury.

Another possible reason for the disparity, it seems to me, is that conclusions from other research don’t always accurately reflect the questions asked. Take the 2018 EVAW headline I mentioned. The small print reveals that the question, with which 33% of respondents disagreed, was, “Do you personally consider it to be rape if they don’t want to have sex but feel pressured to even though there was no other physical violence?” Leaving aside the confusing and redundant “other” (what was the first bit of violence again?) this is absolutely not identical to “Do you think that sex which happens without consent, but where there is no physical violence, isn’t really rape?” Indeed, the 2020 Bench Book even says, “reluctant but free agreement is not the same thing as submission and is still consent even if reluctantly given.”

But why does it matter? Aren’t judicial warnings a good idea just in case? Well, sometimes the defence’s arguments — about delays and injuries and intoxication and inconsistencies — are good arguments. And if the jurors aren’t prejudiced, then a warning about rape myths could easily be taken as a veiled encouragement to ignore a good point. And bad defence arguments? They’ll surely be counterproductive with a myth-free jury.

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Don't base policy on moral panic

By Joan Smith

Shortly before Professor Thomas published her results the Crown Prosecution Service updated and expanded its list of rape myths, with a consultation on their accuracy and usefulness ongoing. Shortly after that, EVAW published another report, entitled “The Decriminalisation of Rape”. Under the heading “Obstacles to Conviction” is listed the very fact of trial by jury, and it goes on to state, “it has been widely accepted by criminal justice bodies that many members of the public continue to believe in long-standing myths and stereotypes relating to rape”. A lively public conversation seems inevitable — and desirable.

Also listed as an obstacle to conviction, interestingly, is the English “adversarial system” of criminal trials. Adversarial systems are having a bit of a moment: the software that creates those amazingly realistic faces of non-existent people, for instance, uses a type of Artificial Intelligence called a General Adversarial Network: progress is made by one algorithm trying to create something convincing, and another that tries to find the holes. This is very much not the tech equivalent of a continental inquisitorial magistrate. A bad defence point is best dealt with by a good prosecution point. It may turn out that the medieval jurists who designed our legal system were onto something.

And a similar process — a dialectic approach to enquiry more generally — is arguably a better route to the truth than any other. There has until now been very little questioning of the prevalence of rape myths among juries, and it’s not hard to see why: who wants to be “that guy”? But Professor Thomas’s research should be welcomed. Her methodology, and her conclusions, might turn out to be wrong. But they should not be ignored.