Good morning. The case against London Metropolitan police officer David Carrick took 14 months to build. It involved 300 witness statements, and between 3,000 and 4,000 pages of evidence. Yesterday, it concluded in just 12 minutes, as Carrick stood up in the dock at Southwark Crown Court and pleaded guilty to one count of false imprisonment, one of indecent assault and four of rape.
In total, Carrick has admitted 85 serious offences against 12 women, covered by 49 charges – and in their news story, Vikram Dodd and Emine Sinmaz describe Carrick as “one of the worst sex offenders in modern history”.
But as complex as the case was, the mountain of evidence against a serving constable – with some offences dating back 20 years – raises other questions: how was he able to get away with it and continue as an officer for so long? And as the Met awaits the outcome of two seismic inquiries into its culture after the murder of Sarah Everard by a serving Met officer, can women’s faith in the force be restored?
Today’s newsletter explains the Carrick case, and what it means for the Met. That’s after the headlines.
Five big stories
Scotland | Rishi Sunak’s government has blocked legislation passed by the Scottish parliament that would make Scotland the first part of the UK to introduce a self-identification system for people who want to change gender. The decision is likely to enrage supporters of the changes and nationalists.
Industrial action | Thousands of schools in England and Wales are set to close in February after teachers voted to strike. Action by members of the National Education Union will begin with a mass strike on 1 February followed by six days of regional stoppages.
Wealth | A charity set up by the UK’s richest person is under investigation after helping fund a £16m luxury clubhouse for an exclusive French Alps club where his family have skied for years. Sir Jim Ratcliffe said the charity was set up to help build a new clubhouse in Courchevel to help underprivileged children learn to ski – but the club says the clubhouse is “dedicated solely to its members”.
China | China has entered an “era of negative population growth”, after figures revealed a historic drop in the number of people for the first time since 1961. A senior government official said the country’s population had reached its peak in 2022, much earlier than expected.
Climate | The return of the El Niño climate phenomenon later this year will cause global temperatures to rise “off the chart” and deliver unprecedented heatwaves, scientists have warned. The hottest year in recorded history, 2016, was driven by a major El Niño.
In depth: ‘This is a day that policing has definitely taken a step back’
David Carrick admitted 43 charges in December, dramatically changing his plea at the last minute from not guilty to guilty. The BBC has a useful explanation of why the story could not be reported until the resolution of the final charges against him yesterday morning.
The Met’s lead for professionalism, Barbara Gray, called Carrick’s offending “unprecedented in policing”. The first allegations against him were made in 2000. But the offences for which he has now been convicted began in 2003. Here’s a timeline of his life and offending.
The 2003 charges, the last to be resolved, were of crimes against a 40-year-old woman. In the years since, he committed many more offences – many within three coercive relationships, but others during one-off encounters. “It didn’t matter to Carrick who the victim was,” said Shilpa Shah, of the Crown Prosecution Service. “A new girlfriend, a long-term partner … a school friend or a stranger – he would still abuse them.” Many took place in Hertfordshire, where he lived and was arrested, but others were in London.
Carrick will be sentenced next month, and is likely to face many years in prison.
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The victims
In October 2021, Carrick was finally caught when a woman came forward to accuse him of raping her in a hotel room at the end of a Tinder date. News of the resulting charge led to many other women coming forward.
The details of his offences are a horrifying record of sexual violence and humiliation, ranging from degrading sex acts to locking women in a cupboard under his stairs and denying them food. Many of the victims’ accounts featured specific similarities that “you wouldn’t be able to make up”, Shah said. She praised their “tremendous courage in overcoming his manipulation to report these abhorrent crimes”.
But the offences of which he has been convicted are not the whole story: none were recorded between 2009 and 2016, and police believe there may have been more victims. One former girlfriend, who met him on Tinder in 2018, told Emine Sinmaz that she had been interviewed by police in Hertfordshire but decided not to make a formal complaint because, already living with anxiety attacks and flashbacks, she did not want to go through a court case.
She described how Carrick became controlling of her finances and her relationship with her family, tracked her movements via her iPhone and started to put her down in front of other people. She said that he asked her to emulate violent sexual acts he had seen in pornography and became violent when she refused.
Carrick raped her on more than one occasion, she said. She finally ended the relationship after he handcuffed her and threw her outside in the middle of the night. “He made me feel very small,” the woman said. “I blame myself. Why did I let him do this? Why did I let him talk to me like that? I should’ve straight away gone to the police but I thought, what if he does what he says, what if he kills me?”
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The Met’s failures
Carrick’s status as a police officer was not incidental to his crimes: he used his status to coerce his victims and convince them that their accusations against him would not be believed. One woman said that he showed her his warrant card to make her feel safe before attacking her in September 2020. Another said that he told her: “I can kill you without leaving any evidence because I work in the police” – and added: “I am a powerful man. Look at the kind of job I do.”
Carrick passed vetting to join the force in 2001 despite allegations of burglary and malicious communications to a woman with whom a relationship had recently ended. He was involved in nine separate police investigations – but his victims did not wish to go forward with a prosecution, and the Met did not join the dots.
Instead, he rose within the force, being promoted in 2009 to a position in the parliamentary and diplomatic protection command and allowed to carry a gun. He passed a further round of vetting in 2017, and even after he was arrested in July 2021 – after the rape and murder of Sarah Everard by a serving Met officer – over a claim of rape, was not suspended from duty. He was nicknamed “Bastard Dave”. His first ever misconduct hearing will be held today.
Sir Mark Rowley, Met commissioner since September, said yesterday: “We have failed. And I’m sorry. He should not have been a police officer. We failed as investigators where we should have been more intrusive and joined the dots on this repeated misogyny over a couple of decades.”
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The wider crisis
Vikram Dodd reports that the initial details of the Carrick case were part of the reason that London mayor Sadiq Khan (pictured above with Rowley) decided to oust then-Met commissioner Dame Cressida Dick in February last year. After replacing her, Sir Mark Rowley promised major reforms – and he said yesterday that the force is now reviewing 1,000 sexual and domestic abuse claims involving about 800 officers.
The Met now awaits the conclusion of two reviews prompted by the killing of Sarah Everard in the next few months. Yesterday, Harriet Wistrich, a solicitor and director of the Centre for Women’s Justice, told Vikram Dodd: “[Carrick’s] crimes, along with a significant number of other Met police officers, reveals the deeply rotten misogynistic culture that has been allowed to exist within the Met.”
On Newsnight last night, Parm Sandhu, a former chief superintendent at the Met, said that a culture which excused descriptions of abusive behaviour as “banter” made it difficult to raise concerns within the force. “There’ll be a line, and they’ll cross that line again and again,” she said. “And when women - it’s normally women - raise those issues, they’re told: if you can’t take a joke, you shouldn’t be in the organisation.”
It is in this context that the Carrick case stands not just as a horrifying story of a single man’s history of sexual violence, but as another blow to the Met’s ability to persuade the public that its officers are trustworthy.
“It is devastating to the trust and confidence that we are working hard to earn from women and girls across London,” said Gray. “This is a day that policing has definitely taken a step back.”
What else we’ve been reading
Zoe Williams’s interview with the general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, Pat Cullen, is a blistering read about the state of the nursing profession as the union gears up for its biggest walkout to date. Nimo
Javier Penino Viñas was raised as the son of a high-ranking Argentinian navy officer. In reality, he was one of 500 desaparecidos – the children kidnapped from those who disappeared during Argentina’s military dictatorship and given to friends of the regime. Two years after the start of a new effort to find those children using DNA testing kits, Viñas’ complex story is the centrepiece of an extraordinary piece by Lorenzo Tondo, Elena Basso, and Sam Jones. Archie
Political drama can often feel contrived, but this New York magazine story (£) that follows the bizarre four-year trail of lies left by Republican congressman George Santos is in a league of its own. Nimo
Benjie Goodhart’s piece about 40 years of breakfast TV is a hugely enjoyable cultural history of a genre viewed as “decadent and sinful” when it began. Featuring Roland Rat, Gyles Brandreth and Cheryl Baker setting a world kissing record, and “a pre-Messianic David Icke”. Archie
Travelling alone can be a daunting experience, but Nooraini Mydin decided to tackle this fear head on in a bid to mark her 60th birthday in a big way. Mydin spoke to Emine Saner about her journey by rail to Kuala Lumpur from London. “Having completed it, I felt I could do anything,” Mydin said. Nimo
Sport
Tennis | Oppressive heat brought much of the Australian Open to a standstill midway through the second day of tennis at Melbourne Park, with played halted on all outside courts. Andy Murray (above) was tied at 2-2 in his match against Matteo Berrettini in the Rod Laver arena as this email was sent.
Rugby | Billy Vunipola has been left out of the England squad for the Six Nations. Vunipola is one of a number of high profile omissions in new coach Steve Borthwick’s team, including Jonny May and Jack Nowell, who have 185 caps between them.
Cricket | The Indian media group Viacom18 has spent £95.4m to secure a five-year deal for the broadcasting rights for the new women’s Indian Premier League. The sale has made the competition one of the most valuable in world cricket, and in women’s sport globally.
The front pages
The case of PC David Carrick dominates the front pages on Tuesday. The Guardian leads with “Met officer admits to brutal campaign of rape and terror”. The Telegraph quotes the Metropolitan police Commissioner as saying, “We have failed. He should not have been an officer”.
The Sun labels him “Monster of the Met”, while the Mirror reflects public fury with “9 chances to stop rapist cop”. The i says, “800 officers face inquiry after failure to stop rapist”. The Mail leads with the same detail, and asks: “Just how many more monsters in uniform?”
Elsewhere, the Daily Record looks at the government’s decision to block Scotland’s gender recognition bill with, “We’ll see you in court”. The Times looks at upcoming strikes, saying, “Mass walkouts by teachers will hit millions of pupils”. Finally, the Financial Times headlines: “US pharma groups pull out of NHS deal in warning shot over drug pricing”.
Today in Focus
China’s deadly coronavirus wave
Having spent much of the last three years with some of the world’s most strict Covid restrictions, China’s relaxing of its rules has coincided with a massive wave of infections just as the country prepares to celebrate the lunar new year. Tania Branigan reports
Cartoon of the day | Steve Bell
The Upside
A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad
The Yale Divinity School is launching the Centre for Public Theology and Public Policy in collaboration with Rev Dr William Barber, a prominent pastor and activist, who is also at the helm of a nationwide movement called the Poor People’s Campaign. Barber is stepping down from his role at Greenleaf Christian church in North Carolina where he has preached for 30 years, to start a new journey: training the next generation of what he calls “moral fusion leaders”, setting them on a path toward public service.
The centre will pull together all of Barber’s goals, ideas and actions that he has been working on as a civil rights leader. From environmental justice, healthcare, living wages, and racial equality, Barber gives himself and those around him immense tasks but appears undaunted, writes Ed Pilkington. “I’m not pessimistic,” he said. “I’m hopeful because of what I see in people.”
Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday
Bored at work?
And finally, the Guardian’s crosswords are here to keep you entertained throughout the day – with plenty more on the Guardian’s Puzzles app for iOS and Android.
