Parole chief must explain release of sex attacker
The chairman of the Parole Board will be summoned before MPS to explain how the decision to free serial sex attacker John Worboys was reached.
Professor Nick Hardwick has apologised “unreservedly” over the failure to inform Worboys’s victims of his imminent release, something he will also be questioned about by the House of Commons justice committee.
He said he fully accepts there was a problem with the parole system, and that it was believed the victims had been informed before the decision was issued.
Chairman of the committee, Conservative MP Bob Neill, said: “What has happened here is very disturbing. It is
Yvette Cooper: ‘Shocked’ by the Parole Board’s decision
vital that the public has confidence in Parole Board decisions.”
Prof Hardwick said in an interview that he is still trying to establish precisely what happened and does not want to “blame anybody yet”.
He said it was not the Parole Board’s responsibility to inform victims, and added: “Whoever’s fault it was, I fully accept this was a problem with [the] parole system. I’m chair of the Parole Board.
“This would have been absolutely horrible for those two women concerned, and I apologise for it unreservedly.”
London taxi driver Worboys, a former stripper and adult film actor, was jailed indefinitely in 2009, with a minimum term of eight years, for drugging and sexually assaulting women passengers. He served ten years.
In a statement, Prof Hardwick said the Parole Board has a “statutory duty” under its rules which “prevents disclosure of proceedings”, and revealed he will be launching a public consultation on how decision-making is shared with the public.
Lawyer Harriet Wistrich said two victims she has represented had not been informed of Worboys’s imminent release or of his Parole Board hearing.
A Ministry of Justice spokesman described Worboys’s crimes as “truly horrendous” and extended their thoughts to the victims for the “pain and suffering they have endured”. Worboys, who became known as the “black cab rapist”, was found guilty of 19 charges of drugging and sex- ually assaulting 12 women passengers, and one count of raping a woman. But police said in 2010 that his alleged victims numbered 102 after more people came forward following his trial and conviction.
The allegations were investigated but no further action was taken on the advice of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), police said.
Yvette Cooper, chairwoman of the home affairs select committee, said she was “really shocked” by the move and called for scrutiny of the Parole Board’s reasoning before he is let out of jail.
Director of public prosecutions at the time of Worboys’s conviction, Labour’s Sir Keir Starmer, urged any alleged victims with concerns about how their case was handled to contact the police.
The shadow Brexit secretary said the Crown Prosecution Service holds the file on the case, and made the decisions.