Victim faces Worboys for first time in court
Woman comes face to face with her attacker for first time as judge grants review of the decision to free him
A victim of John Worboys has told of her disgust at coming face to face with him for the first time after a judge ordered he attend court. The woman was raped by Worboys in the back of his taxi 15 years ago. The victim and another woman were granted permission for a judicial review of Worboys’ parole, with their attacker in attendance after the judge decided that using a video link was unreliable. The full hearing was set for two days next month.
A WOMAN raped by John Worboys has told of her disgust at coming face to face with him for the first time after a judge ordered he attend court in person.
The victim was attacked by Worboys, who drugged and then raped her in the back of his taxi 15 years ago.
Worboys, 60, had been driven to court from Wakefield Prison yesterday morning after Sir Brian Leveson, the judge presiding in the case, decided the night before that using a video link was unreliable.
The woman – one of two victims who have begun a legal bid to overturn the Parole Board decision to release the man dubbed the “black cab rapist” – told The Daily Telegraph: “I prepared myself for the worst.
“My lawyer had phoned me to tell me last night … I felt sick at the idea of being in the same room as that man but I wasn’t going to stay away. Why should we all be scared of him?”
The victim – identified in proceedings as DSD and who is hoping police will reopen her criminal complaint – added: “I thought I have to come because if I go to court eventually I will have to face him anyway. It’s good preparation for me.
“When he came in to court, I couldn’t look at him at first. But when I did I just thought he was pathetic. This was the first time I’d seen him [since that night]. In the cab all I saw was the back of his head. It was the first time I had seen his face.”
Worboys – who was addressed in court by his new name, John Radford – had been flanked in the witness box in court five of the Royal Courts of Justice by four prison guards. The box was encased by a large metal grill, but he sat about 20 feet from his victim.
It was the first time Worboys had been seen in public since his conviction in 2009 for rape, sexual assault and drugging female passengers. He was given an indeterminate sentence and ordered to serve a minimum eight years. Police believe that he sexually assaulted more than 100 women.
In court, Worboys muttered only a few words, his head bowed as Sir Brian explained to him the purpose of the hearing. Worboys gave largely monosyllabic answers.
His victim was not fooled but she believes the Parole Board had been taken in by his quiet, unassuming demeanour. “I can see how he could convince a parole board. Look at him – would you get in his cab? Of course you would.
“He looks harmless,” she said. “He’s sitting there wringing his hands, talking as quietly as he possibly can.
“He’s so convincing, there’s something quite dangerous there. Don’t forget, rape is all about power and control.
“The judge is being kind to him. I understand that he has to be impartial but it’s hard to watch.”
Sir Brian yesterday granted permission for a judicial review of Worboys’ parole and set a date for a full hearing over two days in March. Worboys will remain in jail until then.
Sir Brian also requested that Worboys be given taxpayer-funded legal aid to allow him to be represented throughout the hearings, in contrast to his victims, who have been forced to raise money for the legal action through internet crowdsourcing.
However, it is understood the Legal Aid Agency is likely to turn down Worboys’s request because he owns a £300,000 flat in Poole, Dorset.
The judge explained he had requested Worboys’ attendance in person after experiencing disruption in a case on Tuesday due to a faulty video link.
Harriet Wistrich, the victims’ lawyer, said afterwards that it was “staggering” that in the 21st century video link technology did not work.
She said the second victim – identified only as NBV – had been too upset to come to court. At least one other of Worboys’s victims had watched proceedings from the public gallery.
Ms Wistrich was delighted they had won the first stage of the battle to keep Worboys in jail. But lawyers must now show the Parole Board decision – made on Boxing Day – was “irrational” in order to over turn it.
Phillippa Kaufmann QC, the victims’ barrister, told the court the two victims bringing the case were “very concerned” to ensure something had not gone “horribly wrong” with the Parole Board process.
She said that her clients’ view was that Worboys “remains highly dangerous and that the Board’s conclusion that he now presents no more than a minimal risk to women is unlawful”.
The court ruled that the Parole Board’s reasons for Worboys’s release and the file of evidence presented at his hearing be handed over to the victims and their lawyers, but only after an undertaking not to make the information public.
Ms Wistrich said: “We are looking forward to being able to understand and scrutinise all the material before the Parole Board, to consider how to bring forward a challenge.”
She praised the victim’s courage in
‘ He’s talking as quietly as he possibly can … He’s so convincing, there’s something quite dangerous there’
attending the hearing. “She felt it was really necessary to be there and to say she wasn’t going to be frightened of him being there, and to challenge his power,” said Ms Wistrich, of law firm Birnberg Peirce.
Worboys had been due for release by the end of January but the furore over the Parole Board decision has delayed that until March at the earliest.
Police are also considering at least five fresh cases that have come to light in the past few weeks.
Separately, at a parliamentary select committee hearing yesterday, Professor Nick Hardwick, the Parole Board’s chairman, admitted it was wrong that victims had been forced to make an online appeal to fund the judicial review because there was no automatic process to overturn a parole Board decision.