‘A victory for victims ... he is a danger to all women’
ONE of John Worboys’s youngest victims last night praised the decision to keep him behind bars. Carrie Symonds was a 19-year-old student when she was picked up from a bus stop after a night out and drugged.
She said yesterday: ‘This is an incredible relief. It was the most horrendous shock to be informed earlier this year that Worboys was to be released much sooner than expected, with absolutely no good reason.
‘Myself and other victims of Worboys were sure then, as we are now, that he still poses a real danger to women.’
Miss Symonds, now 30, added: ‘ The Parole Board and the justice system let us down very badly but today us victims who fought to keep him behind bars have been vindicated. This is the right decision.’
She also praised Daily Mail readers who helped raise almost £70,000 via an online campaign to fund the legal challenge.
She added: ‘This victory probably wouldn’t have happened without readers of the Mail.’ Miss Symonds bravely agreed to waive her anonymity to describe the horror of her 2007 ordeal.
Worboys approached her in his cab at a bus stop in Fulham, West London, following a night out with friends. The predator offered to take her home to Surrey even though she had just £5. He claimed it was his final pick-up of the night and that she lived on his way home.
He insisted she drank a glass of champagne with him, telling her he had had a big win at a casino earlier in the evening and wanted someone to celebrate with.
SHE agreed, but poured the contents of the glass onto the cab floor when he wasn’t looking. Worboys then got out to go to the toilet, and was gone for ten minutes as he waited for the drugs in the champagne to kick in. When he returned he convinced her to down a shot of vodka. Miss Symonds, who now works in ocean conservation, said: ‘After I drank the vodka, I can hardly remember a thing. I don’t remember if he got back into the front of the cab straightaway or not.
‘When I finally arrived home, my mother remembers I fell through the door, barely able to walk, like a rag doll.
‘Six months later, I opened a newspaper and read that a black taxi driver had been arrested, accused of raping women having pretended to win money at a casino, giving his passengers spiked champagne. I froze. All the blood left my cheeks. I knew it was him.’
Miss Symonds went to the police claiming she may have been drugged and assaulted and was one of 14 witnesses whose testimony was presented in court at Worboys’s trial in 2009.
Welcoming the Parole Board’s decision to refuse to release Worboys, she added yesterday: ‘I strongly believe Worboys poses a real danger to us all.
‘It could so easily be your mother, your wife, your sister, your daughter, your friend. I feel I would know if Worboys had raped me that night. I’d have flashbacks or there would have been horrendous tell-tale signs when I woke the next day.
‘But I will never truly know for sure what happened after he drugged me.
‘Many girls had similar experiences but many were raped and know they were raped. Their lives have been blighted by it. We can’t let that happen again.’