Six victims of former Metropolitan Police officer and serial rapist David Carrick are preparing to sue the force, alleging it breached their human rights by failing to properly investigate his crimes.
Carrick, now in prison, was sentenced to 36 life terms in February after pleading guilty to 49 charges, including 24 counts of rape, committed against 12 women while he was a serving police officer. The six women claim the Met failed to protect them despite multiple opportunities to intervene.
According to the Centre for Women's Justice, which represents the claimants, the women are seeking to understand what action could be taken to prevent similar failings. A lawyer for the group said the victims wanted to help ensure that no one else suffered the same fate.
The Met Police confirmed it had received letters of claim earlier this year. A spokesperson said: 'Following David Carrick's conviction we apologised to all his victims and more widely to women across London who felt we had let them down by failing to earlier deal with his sickening offending.'
Carrick had come to police attention on nine occasions between 2000 and 2021, including over rape allegations. His trial heard he used his position as a police officer to control and intimidate his victims. This is not the first such legal action against the Met; two survivors of the taxi driver John Worboys previously won damages of more than £40,000 in a 2014 High Court ruling that found the force had breached the Human Rights Act.
