Serial rapist London police officer sentenced to life in prison

Metropolitan Police officer David Carrick raped and sexually assaulted a dozen women over a 17-year period

Prosecutors described his case as one of the most shocking involving a serving police officer

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New Scotland Yard. The conviction of David Carrick has plunged London’s Metropolitan Police Service into a fresh credibility crisis. Photo: dpa

Published: 12:20pm, 8 Feb 2023

A serial rapist London police officer was sentenced to life imprisonment for carrying out an “unrestrained campaign of rape and abusing” 12 women over almost two decades.

David Carrick pleaded guilty to 49 charges that include 24 counts of rape and further counts of controlling and coercive behaviour, sexual assault and false imprisonment. His crimes took place between 2003 and 2020.

The 48-year-old most recently served in the elite force protecting the UK’s Houses of Parliament and foreign embassies.

“These convictions represents a spectacular downfall for a man charged with upholding the law,” Judge Bobbie Cheema-Grubb said in handing down the sentence. “You took monstrous advantage of women drawn into intimate relationships with you. You brazenly raped and sexually assaulted many women, some you barely knew.”

The conviction has plunged London’s Metropolitan Police Service into a fresh credibility crisis. The organisation has been beset by a string of damaging scandals that have shaken public trust in the UK’s biggest police force.

Touching on that issue, Cheema-Grubb said that the repeated reluctance of his victims to come forward illustrates “an astonishing degree of moral corruption” in the way victims of sexual crime are treated in society.