British policeman David Carrick admitted on Monday that he had carried out dozens of rapes and other sexual assaults against at least 12 women, using his role for years to intimidate them and discourage them from reporting him. Carrick’s crimes have been described in the UK as among the most serious of gender-based violence ever involving a member of the police force. Above all, the case has fueled the debate that has been going on for some years on the sexism and misogyny of the police forces, which had already emerged with the kidnapping, rape and murder in London of Sarah Everard, whose manager in that case too was a police officer, later sentenced to life in prison.
Carrick is 48 years old and has been part of the London Metropolitan Police since 2001, the largest police department in the United Kingdom and the same as Everard’s attacker and murderer, Wayne Couzens. In 2009 Carrick was promoted to the PaDP, a special unit of the Metropolitan Police responsible for the protection of important government and diplomatic buildings, such as parliament, the prime minister’s residence and embassies.
Carrick had been suspended from duty and arrested in 2021, after a woman accused him of raping her. The two had met on the Tinder app, and during their first meeting he had shown her his police card, told her that he had met several famous people, including the prime minister, and that he knew how to handle firearms well. . The woman said Carrick then convinced her to follow him to a hotel room and raped her. She added that he was looking for a “submissive” woman, a testimony similar to that of other women who, after Carrick’s arrest, had contacted the police to report having suffered various types of violence from Carrick.
According to the stories that have emerged so far, during sexual encounters Carrick addressed women as “slaves”, forced them into degrading acts and then discouraged them from denouncing him, claiming that they would never be believed because their word would have no value when compared with that of a police officer of his level. One of the women who accused him said, for example, that she was locked up in a basement.
After Carrick’s arrest it was learned that previously, in at least nine cases from 2003 to 2021, some women had reported to the police of rapes and violence committed by the officer: internal investigations had been launched which, however, had led to nothing (don’t know why).
On Monday, Police Commissioner Barbara Gray publicly apologized to the women Carrick has raped for failing to identify “a pattern of abuse” over time, thus allowing him to continue to commit them.
During the first hearings Carrick had initially denied the allegations that had been leveled against him. The first admission of guilt was made quite abruptly and unexpectedly last December. Finally, on Monday, Carrick formally pleaded guilty to 49 counts of violence against 12 women: rapes and kidnappings, among other things.
The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said he was “disgusted” by the violence carried out by Carrick and put further pressure on the London Metropolitan Police to take steps to make them less misogynistic and violent. The hearing in which the sentence for Carrick will be communicated is scheduled for next February.
