A Metropolitan Police officer is facing life in prison after admitting a horrific campaign of rape and abuse against women throughout his policing career.
PC David Carrick, 48, subjected at least a dozen victims to appalling physical and emotional abuse over the course of 18 years, while wielding his status as a police officer to ensure they stayed silent.
The armed officer, who help to guard politicians and VIPs for more than a decade as a trusted member of the Met’s Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection Command, forced the women into humiliating and degrading sexual acts, whipped one with a belt, and kept some locked for hours inside a tiny cupboard.
Carrick’s case has plunged Scotland Yard into a fresh crisis, after it emerged a string of opportunities to reveal his true character were missed.
Carrick - known to colleagues as “Bastard Dave” - was finally caught in October 2021 when a woman came forward to accuse the PC of raping her in a hotel room at the end of a Tinder date.
News of his arrest opened the floodgates, with 12 more women coming forward to reveal Carrick’s catalogue of physical and sexual abuse dating back to 2003, in the infancy of his career in the Met.
Carrick has now pleaded guilty to 49 charges, confirming his status as one of Britain’s worst ever serial rapists.
He has admitted raping women on at least 48 different occasions between 2003 and 2020.It can now be revealed that Carrick came to police attention as a suspect nine times between 2000 and 2020, for allegations including harassment of former girlfriends and assaulting women.
However he was never arrested or charged, he successfully passed two rounds of vetting, and a series of opportunities to investigate Carrick’s position in the Met were missed.
Carrick was removed from frontline duty but not suspended or re-vetted when he was accused of rape in July 2021, when the Met was in the midst of the biggest crisis in its history.
On Monday evening, the Met’s top officer, Sir Mark Rowley, said in a statement: “We have failed. And I’m sorry. He should not have been a police officer.
“We haven’t applied the same sense of ruthlessness to guarding our own integrity that we routinely apply to confronting criminals. We failed in two respects.
“We failed as investigators where we should have been more intrusive and joined the dots on this repeated misogyny over a couple of decades. And as leaders, our mindset should have been more determined to root out such a misogynist.”
Colleagues said Carrick’s nickname was not linked to sexual offending, but based on his reputation for “mean” and “cruel” behaviour.
He used online dating sites like Badoo and Tinder to target women, and came across initially as “fun-loving, charming, and charismatic”, investigators said.
One woman revealed how Carrick flashed his warrant card when they first met for a date, he boasted about protecting then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and openly called himself a “dominant bastard”.
“He introduced himself as a police officer and said ‘you are safe with me’,” said senior CPS prosecutor Shilpa Shah.
“Most victims said they feared they would not be believed because he was a police officer.” She added: “He was very manipulative, self-confident almost to the point of being cocky, and he knew what he was doing.”
In harrowing accounts of the abuse they suffered, women revealed how Carrick had urinatted on them, forced them to clean his house naked, controlled their eating habits, and locked them in a cupboard beneath the stairs which was little bigger than a dog crate.
“It is unbelievable to think these offences could have been committed by a serving police officer” said Detective Chief Inspector Iain Moor, who led the investigation by the Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire Major Crime Unit.
“He thrived on humiliating his victims and cleverly used his professional position to intimate there was no point in them trying to seek help because they would never be believed.”
Scotland Yard said as part of its reforms in the wake of Carrick’s case and other scandals, past allegations of domestic abuse and sexual misconduct made against around 1,000 officers and staff have been put under review.
In total, Carrick, from Stevenage, pleaded guilty to 24 rape charges – including some which represented multiple attacks – five counts of sexual assault by penetration, two attempted rapes, three counts of controlling and coercive behaviour, three incidents of false imprisonment, 12 counts of sexual assault, indecent assault, causing a person to engage in sexual activity, and attempted assault by penetration.
He has denied a further charge of rape and possession of an imitation firearm with intent to cause fear of violence.
Speaking on the steps of Southwark Crown Court, Chief Crown Prosecutor, Jaswant Narwal, said: “This is one of the most shocking cases the Crown Prosecution Service has dealt with involving a serving police officer.
“Anyone hearing of the 49 counts David Carrick had pleaded guilty to against 12 victims would agree the sheer magnitude of his offending is horrfying. Today the victims who suffered at the hands of David Carrick have finally seen justice.
“It is their courage in standing up against this heinously abusive man - a police officer - that has helped to secure his conviction.”
Mrs Justice Cheema Grubb is due to sentence Carrick over two days on February 6 and 7. Carrick entered most of the guilty pleas before Christmas, and the case can be fully reported today after he admitted the final six charges.
