Victims go face-to-face with Worboys in court as they fight to block release
BLACK cab rapist John Worboys today came face to face with some of his victims as a legal challenge to block his release got under way.
Wearing a grey shirt with green sleeves, he sat in the dock flanked by four guards. He attended the hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice after being driven all the way from his cell at Wakefield jail.
The option of using a video link was ruled out after the technology was deemed too unreliable. So prison officials had to send him on a 370-mile round trip at taxpayers’ expense to make what his first known public appearance since his 2009 conviction.
Sir Brian Leveson, one of two judges presiding at today’s hearing, said he had ordered Worboys’ attendance on the grounds that the convict was an important participant, and he was not prepared to take the risk that the video technology — which failed yesterday — would not work again.
Sir Brian said he understood that at least one victim was unhappy about Worboys’ presence, and was “sorry about that” but the attendance was essential.
It came as Government lawyers said they were ready to provide the two victims involved in today’s case with full details of why the decision was made to release the rapist.
They said the documents “include intimate details” about Worboys “including reports by psychologists which discuss highly personal matters”, but would only be handed over if the victims and lawyers agreed to keep them confidential. Sir Brian Leveson and Mr Justice Garnham began hearing the legal challenge by two victims and Mayor Sadiq Khan against the Parole Board’s decision to approve the rapist’s release.
Worboys, 60, now known as John Radford, has served just under 10 years of an indeterminate sentence after he was found guilty of 19 offences, including a rape and several sexual assaults, against 12 women. Police later said they suspected his true number of victims totalled more than 100.
Today’s challenge is being brought under judicial review rules. Phillippa Kaufmann QC, representing two victims, said they believed the decision to release Worboys and the secrecy with which it was taken were unlawful.
She added that there was “a strong case that Mr Worboys remains highly dangerous and that the [Parole] Board’s conclusion that he now presents no more than a minimal risk to women is unlawful.” Ms Kaufmann said that Worboys’s release should also be delayed until the challenge by the victims — which will be decided at a later hearing if today’s bid for permission to proceed succeeds — has concluded.
The Parole Board argues it has acted lawfully and that the evidence considered by its officials justified the freeing of Worboys. But it said today that it would not seek to block a full hearing.
In a submission to the court on behalf of Justice Secretary David Gauke, barrister Patrick Halliday said that the minister also did not oppose a full hearing on the lawfulness of the decision to free Worboys.
Barrister Clive Sheldon QC, said, however, that this issue should be decided separately, and more quickly, than the question of whether the secrecy of the Parole Board’s process was wrong.
He added that the handover of the Parole Board’s “dossier of evidence” on Worboys would only take place once today’s “permission” hearing gives the go-ahead for a full judicial review of the release decision.
The decision to release Worboys provoked an outcry when it was announced last month.
The Parole Board has said that it would like to be able to give more details of how it reached its decision but that it is legally barred from doing so because of “Rule 25” restrictions which compel confidentiality.
Today’s legal challenge centres on both the claim that this rule is unlawful and the argument that the decision to release Worboys was unreasonable because of the potential threat that the victims and the Mayor believe that he must still pose.