The former officer’s crimes spanned over 30 years
Serial rapist David Carrick “hid behind his uniform” in the Metropolitan Police to get away with horrific sexual abuse spanning some 30 years. Nicknamed “Bastard Dave”, Carrick joined the force in 2001, even boasting of meeting then prime minister Boris Johnson in the course of his duties.
Following a period of serving in the British Army, Carrick transferred to the Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection Command in 2009, where his role involved guarding parliamentary, government and diplomatic buildings. Detective Superintendent Iain Moor, from Hertfordshire Police, said the fact Carrick was in the police and carried a gun created a “power imbalance” between him and his victims.
He told the PA news agency: “Obviously, he did have a charming side. Initially he was able to get into relationships. That then turned into a very sinister side, as we’ve seen. I think that initial charm coupled with the trust, being a police officer, being a uniformed police officer, that’s how he was able to get away with it for a long period of time.”
He added: “Sadly the victims just didn’t feel they were able to come forward and report a police officer offending against them, and that they would be believed, and that’s a really sad state of affairs if that’s the case. People should be able to trust the police. They should be able to come forward and report offending.”
DSI Moor continued: “I would describe him as a very dangerous offender. He hid behind his uniform to be able to do his offending. Some of the degrading acts that he did – it was truly horrific. Some of the things that he did to the victims – we’ve seen pictures of the cupboard that he used to use to put victims in from the first investigation. Just really inhumane, degrading acts, and all whilst, the majority of which, while a serving police officer.”
At the time of his first prosecution in 2023, the court heard how Carrick, now aged 50, found some of his victims on dating sites before arranging to meet at bars and using his status as a police officer to gain their trust. He was originally arrested at his home in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, in October 2021.
Carrick was suspended from duty after his arrest and remanded in custody as the investigation snowballed as a result of the publicity surrounding the case. Carrick went on to admit sex attacks on a dozen women who came forward after the first complaint.
The defendant, who had a pet snake, exercised control over women by paying for dinner and drinks so that they would feel indebted to him, before isolating them from their friends and family members. Women were locked in a small cupboard under the stairs in Carrick’s home for hours without food, or made to clean the house naked.
Carrick urinated over some of his victims and made derogatory comments about them, referring to them as his “slave” or a “whore”. The court heard he had also searched the internet for “rough” pornography.
After the first case, police began to investigate allegations by two more women, one of whom said he had abused her when she was just 12 years old and Carrick was himself a teenager. The second woman’s claims were similar to those of Carrick’s other victims, and involved controlling and coercive behaviour after they met through a dating app.
Shilpa Shah, a senior crown prosecutor on the rape and sexual offences unit at the Crown Prosecution Service, said: “I think the fact that he was abusing a child at the time when he was a teenager shows the level of his offending behaviour. He has escalated in his behaviour since in terms of the type of offending that he’s been committing. But it shows that by nature, he was a controlling and abusive man right from the start.”
On his crimes as an adult, she said: “David Carrick comes across as a very charming and charismatic man. He was committing these offences behind closed doors, and he had a facade that he created for the rest of the world. Nobody knew what he was doing behind those doors. He was very clever in how he behaved. And so it was as a result of that that no-one picked up on what he was doing.”
She added: “We’ve got to also remember that the first victim in this case was a 12-year-old child at the time, who was traumatised and terrified. She managed to disclose to someone, but she didn’t report it to the police at the time. As soon as she did, of course, the police did investigate the matter. But the reason that Carrick got away with all his offending is because of his very nature of being able to live this double life, and not show his real character, which now the victims have exposed.”
Carrick was jailed for life in February 2023 with a minimum term of 32 years after he admitted a string of sex offences against 12 women. When police investigated further claims against him, he had denied molesting a 12-year-old girl and claimed the sex with a former partner was consensual.
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