Predators like Wayne Couzens are still entering police forces more than four years after the serving officer raped and murdered Sarah Everard, The Independent can reveal.
Lady Elish Angiolini has warned that police forces in England and Wales have still not barred men with criminal convictions or cautions for sexual offences from applying to join.
She said it was “shocking” that her recommendations to drastically tighten police vetting, issued in February last year, have still not been fully implemented.
In the second phase of an inquiry launched in the wake of the horrifying crime which sparked national debate about police standards and women’s safety, Lady Elish said “countless other women” have been targeted by men since the marketing executive, 33, was abducted and killed by Couzens, a Metropolitan Police officer, in 2021.
In her latest report, she warned that predators “continue to roam freely” as women live in fear in public spaces, and she slammed “critical failures” in recording basic data about attacks.
Everard’s heartbroken mother, Susan Everard, revealed she continues to “rage” against her death and the report “shows how much work there is to do in preventing sexually motivated crimes against women”.
“I go through a turmoil of emotions – sadness, rage, panic, guilt and numbness,” she said. “They used to come all in one day but as time goes by they are more widely spaced and, to some extent, time blunts the edges. I am not yet at the point where happy memories of Sarah come to the fore.
“When I think of her, I can’t get past the horror of her last hours. I am still tormented by the thought of what she endured.”
Laying out her findings on Tuesday, Lady Elish said: “Women change their travel plans, their routines, and their lives out of fears for their safety in public, while far too many perpetrators continue to roam freely. Women deserve to feel safer. They deserve to be safer.”
Issuing 13 recommendations to initiate a “whole-society” approach to protecting women – including the nationwide rollout of two police programmes to stop predators – she called for a “turning point” in the fight against violence against women and girls (VAWG).
Lady Elish said it was “deeply disappointing” that a number of recommendations from the first part of the inquiry have still not been implemented despite being publicly accepted by government and police chiefs 18 months ago.
She told The Independent: “We are still getting potential people like Wayne Couzens coming into the police.
“That is the risk that they’re taking, and they should not be inflicting that on the public. You know, these police officers are going into people’s homes, people’s bedrooms.
“I genuinely can’t understand it. Why would you want to entertain that risk?”
And, despite VAWG being classed as a “national threat” in 2023, 26 per cent of police forces have not even implemented a specialist policy on investigating sexual offences, including non-contact offences such as indecent exposure.
Lady Elish said: “I want leaders to, quite simply, get a move on. There are lives at stake.”
The former lord advocate for Scotland, who was appointed by former home secretary Priti Patel in the wake of Everard’s murder in 2021, found that basic questions over how many women are raped in public in England and Wales each year cannot be answered.
“If this data is not being gathered and recorded consistently across forces, how can it be analysed to spot patterns in offending?” she added. “This is a critical failure.”
A survey of 2,000 people commissioned by the inquiry found almost nine in 10 women aged 18 to 24 had experienced an incident in a public space in the past three years, while three-quarters had felt unsafe due to the actions of a man.
Despite this, almost 80 per cent of women had not reported the incident to the police.
The 219-page report also found that prevention measures were often under-prioritised for funding due to difficulties in evaluating their success.
Although VAWG is classed as a national threat, it is underfunded and treated as a “Cinderella” service compared to other major threats like terrorism and serious and organised crime.
Too often, a focus on prevention remains “just words”, Lady Elish said, adding: “Until this disparity is addressed, violence against women and girls cannot credibly be called a ‘national priority’.”
Lady Elish also hit out at a “scattered” approach to tackling VAWG across 43 police forces in England and Wales, which is creating “patchwork initiatives which vary from place to place”.
She called for Project Vigilant, a police programme targeting predators in clubs and bars, and Operation Soteria, which aims to improve rape and sexual offence investigations, to be funded for nationwide rollout.
She also demanded a better understanding of how violent pornography and “unfettered access” to harmful online content are impacting crimes against women. She previously found that Couzens was addicted to extreme pornography before he killed Everard.
“Online spaces are becoming increasingly violent and degrading places, where misogyny and hatred towards women not only flourishes but is disgustingly celebrated,” Lady Elish said.
“I find it inconceivable to see how this cannot impact offending in the ‘physical’ world too.”
Farah Naz, the aunt of murdered law graduate Zara Aleena, said her death reflects “systemic failure rather than isolated tragedy”. She welcomed the inquiry’s backing for her calls for a Good Samaritan law, requiring witnesses to act when they see someone in danger.
Ms Naz added: “I hope this recommendation is taken seriously and progresses with the urgency and commitment these cases demand.”
Couzens used his police warrant card to trick Everard into getting into his car as she walked home from a friend’s flat in Clapham, south London, in March 2021. He was handed a rare whole life order after her body was found dumped in a woodland.
The Angiolini Inquiry was launched in the wake of the shocking crime to look at wider issues within policing and women’s safety.
In the first stage of her inquiry, published last year, Lady Elish found Couzens’s predatory sexual behaviour started 20 years before he killed Everard, and he should never have been allowed to join the police.
She called for a radical overhaul of police vetting and recruitment after finding repeated failures to spot red flags, allowing three separate police forces to permit him to serve.
Lady Elish also called for a fundamental change to how police respond to indecent exposure after repeated incidents linked to Couzens were not properly investigated.
A second report from part two of the Angiolini inquiry will be published next year, looking at failures in police vetting, police culture and poor police investigations into reports of sexual offences.
A third phase of the inquiry will consider the crimes of David Carrick – who also served in the Met’s Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection Command and was handed 36 life sentences in 2023 after being unmasked as a serial rapist.
Deputy assistant commissioner Helen Millichap, the director of the National Centre for Violence Against Women and Girls and Public Protection (NCVPP), agreed that for “too long” it has felt inevitable that women must change their behaviour to feel safe.
“It is not, and we agree that our focus must be on the relentless pursuit of perpetrators and spotting patterns in offending,” she said.
“We are already working proactively to recognise, intervene, and interrupt predatory behaviour in public spaces, and are pleased the report acknowledges this work.”
Shabana Mahmood, home secretary, added: “I thank Lady Elish Angiolini for this vital report, which makes clear that women do not feel safe going about their lives today. This is utterly unacceptable and must change. A new £13.1m centre will strengthen the police response to these crimes and drive real change, but more needs to be done.
“We will carefully consider each recommendation the inquiry has made. This government will halve violence against women and girls within a decade, and our upcoming VAWG strategy will set out how we achieve this.”
