Met loses challenge on taxi driver rape cases

THE Metropolitan Police have lost a challenge to a ruling which led to two women who were seriously sexually assaulted by London cabbie John Worboys being awarded compensation totalling £41,250.

One of the women, identified only as DSD, was the first of Worboys’s victims to make a complaint to the Met in 2003. The other, NBV, contacted the London force after she was attacked in July 2007.

Between 2002 and 2008, Worboys – who was jailed for life in 2009 – carried out more than 100 rapes and sexual assaults, using alcohol and drugs to stupefy his victims.

In 2013, the High Court ruled that the Met was liable for failures in its investigation and, last year, said that DSD and NBV – who brought their claims under Article 3 of the Human Rights Act, which relates to inhuman or degrading treatment – should receive £22,250 and £19,000 compensation respectively.

In May, the Met’s counsel, Jeremy Johnson QC, told the Court of Appeal that the challenge related to points of principle and the two women would keep their damages payments whatever the outcome.

The judges dismissed both the Met’s appeal, and a linked appeal against a High Court decision that Greater Manchester Police did not violate an assault victim’s human rights because of deficiencies in the investigation.