How COULD they call this man ‘open and honest’?
Fury over Parole Board ruling on black cab rapist Worboys
BLACK cab rapist John Worboys was approved for prison release after the Parole Board ruled he had been ‘open and honest’ about his crimes, it was revealed yesterday.
The panel decided his risk of reoffending could be managed in the community, despite previous warnings that the Category A prisoner was too dangerous to be released.
Lawyers for his victims said the panel’s decision was ‘irrational’ because it failed to consider the full extent of his offending, including the police’s belief that he had targeted more than 100 women, making him Britain’s most prolific sex attacker. Two of his victims are seeking to overturn the Parole Board decision to release the 60-year-old sex attacker.
Their lawyer Phillippa Kaufmann QC told the High Court in London yesterday that the process had gone ‘badly wrong’.
It follows an outcry in January when it emerged Worboys could be freed within weeks of the panel’s decision, and that his traumatised victims had not been informed about the ruling or why the decision had been taken.
Miss Kaufmann revealed the board had ruled Worboys posed a reduced risk of reoffending because he had ‘learned to be open and honest’ about his crimes and had undergone therapy. He was deemed to have shown ‘good insight’ about why he had sexually assaulted women, and the panel believed he would comply with the conditions of his release, including a night-time curfew and monitoring by the Probation Service.
But Miss Kaufmann told a panel of three judges that Worbelieve boys had admitted he had carried out the attacks only in 2015 – six years after he was jailed indefinitely for drugging and sexually assaulting female passengers in his London taxi.
He has now admitted attacks on 12 women in 18 months – the same offences for which he was convicted at his 2009 trial – and has paid out £241,000 to settle 11 civil claims brought by his victims. He received legal assistance with that civil case from serial killer Levi Bellfield, who he met in Wakefield Prison.
Worboys claimed he began the sex attacks after splitting from his girlfriend in 2005, but police he carried out assaults on at least 105 women between 2002 and 2008, meaning they began before the breakdown of his relationship.
Miss Kaufmann said the discrepancies called into question the Parole Board’s confidence in his ‘openness and honesty’ about his crimes, and his ‘insight’ into what triggered them. She told the court: ‘That throws into question the entire account he has given for why his offending began. Hence the finding that he had insight into his offending is simply blown out of the water.
‘It also blows out of the water the Parole Board’s finding that he is open and honest... It completely undermines its reasoning.’
The lawyer said the Parole Board had known about the police’s belief that Worboys had attacked at least 105 women, and had the power to contact his victims and consider their evidence as part of its duty to protect the public.
But instead, it took the highly unusual decision that he should be released from a Category A prison into the community, rather than going to a lowersecurity jail or an open prison.
A previous Parole Board had ruled two years earlier that Worboys should remain in a high-security prison, and a prison review in August 2017 decided he should remain in Category A.
Miss Kaufmann said: ‘It was irrational for the Parole Board to conclude that it was safe for [Worboys] to move straight from a Category A prison into the community.’
It was proposed that he should be banned from working as a taxi driver, would have an initial curfew between 8pm and 8am and would have to tell his probation officer if he began new relationships with women or felt there was a risk of him offending again.
Worboys, who has changed his name to John Radford, appeared via videolink from prison wearing a grey sweatshirt. He made copious notes during the hearing.
His legal team is expected to address the court today and argue that it would be unfair for the Parole Board to base its decision on allegations of sexual assaults that have not been tried in court.
The board is also expected to defend its decision.
The hearing continues.
‘Undermines its reasoning’