The Metropolitan police protected a predatory rapist within their ranks, dismissing the complaints of one of his victims and leaving him free to attack a teenager, a judge has said.
Adam Provan, 44, was on Tuesday jailed for 16 years, followed by eight years on licence, for eight counts of raping two victims between 2003 and 2010.
The former officer was convicted in June of six counts of rape of a female police officer with whom he had been in a relationship between 2003 and 2005, and two counts of rape of a 16-year-old girl in 2010.
Judge Noel Lucas KC said the force should be ashamed, that their response to the female officer’s complaint had been “abysmal and shocking” and that they had been more interested in “looking out for one of their own”.
The first victim, who is still a police officer, said Provan thought he was untouchable and that she feared she would be killed. The trial at Wood Green crown court heard that he held a pillow over her face and burned her with a kettle as part of a campaign of “abuse and harassment”.
The woman complained to the Met about stalking and harassment by Provan in 2005. The court was told she was reluctant to make a full statement at the time, having been labelled by fellow officers as a “griefy plonk”. She came forward to report the rapes only in 2019.
Lucas said to Provan: “I find it highly troubling that [the officer’s] colleagues in the Metropolitan police in 2004-05 were more concerned about looking out for ‘one of their own’ than in taking her seriously and investigating her complaints about you. Had they done so, it may be that [the second victim] would have been spared the ordeal she has had to go through.”
The judge said an inspector had told Provan he would not be arrested or cautioned, and the crime would be shown as being “cleared up”. “I rather took ‘cleared up’ to mean that records would show the matter had been closed,” Lucas said. “I can barely imagine how desperate that treatment of her must have left [the officer] feeling.”
The Met pledged to carry out a full investigation into the missed opportunities to stop Provan. Among them was a report by another female police officer in 2005 that she was receiving “nuisance” messages from Provan, but the complaint was dealt with “informally” and not taken further.
Provan went on to rape the second complainant, Lauren Taylor, when she was 16, having met her through a friend in 2010. Her father, the court heard, felt his daughter was safe because she was with a police officer.
Taylor, who is now 29 and has waived her right to anonymity, had agreed to go to the cinema with Provan after he said he was a police officer and lied about his age, saying he was 22 when he was 31.
Instead, Provan took her to some woods, where he raped her even though she repeatedly told him no.
Speaking of her ordeal, she said: “Basically he raped me. I remember holding on to the tree. I was kind of hugging the tree like emotional support, pretended I was anywhere else in the world but back there. I remember it can’t have been long, but it felt like a long time.”
The Met assistant commissioner Louisa Rolfe said: “We can already see there were key moments where we let women down and did not do all we could to support them. We have told the Independent Office for Police Conduct we are carrying out a review and advised them that we will make appropriate referrals.”
The sustained nature of Provan’s degrading attacks on women, as well as the Met allowing such a dangerous man to remain in their ranks, has strong echoes of the case of David Carrick, who was jailed this year for dozens of attacks on 12 victims while he was a serving Met officer.
The Met said: “We are working to identify if there may be further victims and would encourage anyone with information to come forward. We are also reviewing Provan’s full history in the Met, and before he joined, to identify any concerns and whether we could have taken action against him sooner.”
Lucas spoke of Provan’s “cold-blooded and chilling entitlement to sex” and the prosecutor, Anthony Metzer KC, told the court that Provan had “an extended history of allegations” of sexual misconduct dating back to the 1990s, including “stalkerish behaviour”. The court heard he had watched teenage pornography online and had allegedly contacted another 16-year-old girl after she gave her details as a witness.
The defendant had 751 female contacts on his mobile phone, indicating a “fascination bordering on the obsessive” with young women, Lucas said. As well as their names and numbers, their ages appeared to be listed, the court heard.
Metzer said the details on Provan’s phone “strongly suggested” there was sexual activity with the women, many of whom were young.
Rolfe said: “Provan had many women’s names on his phone – detectives are working through this list to understand how they may be linked to Provan and whether there are more offences we are unaware of.”
During sentencing, Taylor said: “No prison sentence will take away the harm Adam Provan has caused me. No amount of justice will make me forget the date from hell. Even though I tried my best to block it out I will never forget how scared I was when the assault took place, and 13 years later reliving my worst nightmare.”
She said the murder of Sarah Everard by a serving police officer, Wayne Couzens, in 2021 was “a massive trigger, everywhere I looked people were talking about bad cops, but I already knew this was the case”.
The first victim said: “I shared [with the police] that [Provan] had been harassing me, burnt me, followed me, burnt his car up for insurance money, and was violent. I listened to them tell me it would follow me for my service if I wanted anything done. It was exactly as he told me it would be: he had control and I wouldn’t be believed or supported.
“I was now labelled a ‘griefy plonk who would do your legs’. I had got Adam moved and I was the problem. I felt punished but kept smiling, working hard and saying nothing … I was the victim, but I felt like the suspect.”
Provan’s first trial for two rapes ended in a hung jury but he was convicted in 2018 and jailed for nine years. The next year, he was dismissed from the Metropolitan police. He served three years and three months in prison – only to be released on bail after the court of appeal quashed the conviction.
At the fresh trial, Taylor gave evidence for a third time, and six more charges of rape, relating to Provan’s earlier attacks on the female officer, were added.
• Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organisations. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222 in England and Wales, 0808 801 0302 in Scotland, or 0800 0246 991 in Northern Ireland. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html
