Met ‘suppressed sexual assault by detective’
Female former police worker hits out at Scotland Yard for dropping the case and ‘gaslighting’ her
SCOTLAND YARD has been accused of suppressing a serious sexual assault claim involving a serving officer, despite its new commissioner vowing to root out misogyny in the ranks, The Daily Telegraph can reveal.
A former police employee has claimed the Met Police tried to “gaslight and bully” her after she came forward with allegations that a detective constable forced himself on her at work in March 2019.
Misconduct proceedings against the officer collapsed just 11 days before the hearing, when the woman claims she was told the force’s disciplinary unit had “just lost a sexual offence hearing and didn’t want to lose another one”.
The accused officer has been allowed to return to his duties while his alleged victim has resorted to mounting a tribunal claim against the Met Police.
It comes as the force was plunged into fresh crisis this week when a serving armed police officer was revealed as one of Britain’s most prolific rapists.
David Carrick, who joined the Met in 2001, pleaded guilty to 49 charges against 12 victims covering 85 separate offences. The Met acknowledged nine opportunities to catch him were missed and Carrick passed both vetting and enhanced vetting with the force despite years of serious allegations against him.
Sir Mark Rowley, the Met Police commissioner, apologised for the failings and said Carrick should “never have been a police officer”.
Despite Sir Mark saying he would be “ruthless” in eradicating wrongdoing at the scandal-hit force, the woman who claims she was bullied says her complaints have been met with a “horrible” response. She was one of many women who spoke to Dame Louise Casey’s team as she prepared last year’s report which revealed the Met still employed hundreds of officers who should have been sacked for misconduct.
The woman, who chose to remain anonymous, said: “It almost feels like the Met Police have taken over the abuse from where the officer left off. It feels like they are trying to gaslight and bully me. If they said they would reopen the case and try again for gross misconduct, that is all I want. A fair hearing was all I wanted.”
The professional standards directorate led the inquiry, rather than the specialists who investigate sexual offences for the Met and the officer was arrested. The woman said: “(Professional standards) had told someone in my office, who then told him a good eight hours before he was arrested that I had reported a sexual offence and so he obviously knew that was coming and had quite a long time to prepare.”
After a months-long wait, she was told there would be no further action in the investigation. She said an officer told her that her alleged attacker “would definitely get done for gross misconduct”. Months passed until she received a call at home in February 2021. At the time, she had been told to self-isolate so she did not catch Covid before the hearing in 11 days’ time.
The woman who was her point of contact is said to have told her: “He’s going back to work. They’ve decided not to do the hearing, they have just lost another sexual offence hearing and don’t want to lose another one.”
The Met later denied this was the reason the hearing was abandoned, instead citing unspecified “discrepancies” in the woman’s evidence.
“It was like a rug being pulled out from under me,” she said. She decided to leave the force and has begun tribunal proceedings on the grounds of indirect sexual discrimination and victimisation. A spokesman for the Met Police said: “The matter is progressing to an employment tribunal hearing and therefore it would be inappropriate to comment further at this stage.”