Harriet Wistrich, Director of Centre for Women’s Justice
In January 2018, whilst in a meeting, I was suddenly inundated with urgent texts and phone calls from journalists and broadcasters asking for my comments on a leaked news story that John Worboys, a taxi driver who had been convicted of a series of drug facilitated sexual assaults, had been approved for release by the parole board. I had represented two of his victims, who became known as DSD and NBV, in a landmark human rights case which established a duty on the police to conduct adequate investigations into allegations of rape and serious sexual violence in accordance with Article 3 of the European Convention of Human Rights. The police had originally quickly dismissed the allegations of my two clients as well as those of several other women who had reported him over a six-year period between 2002 and 2008. Their failures meant that Worboys continued offending on a regular basis until he was eventually caught, by which time more than 100 women had been his victim.
My clients were both horrified to hear the news that after nine years in prison for having reportedly attacked over 100 women, Worboys would be regarded as safe to release. I conveyed my clients’ views to the media which was echoed by almost everyone who expressed an opinion. A number of Worboys’ other victims, including some who had never previously reported him, contacted me to share their horror at the parole board decision. All of them were convinced that he had conned the parole board into believing he was a reformed character, and that it was almost certain he remained a serious risk to women.
Because of the work undertaken on the civil action brought by DSD and NBV, Phillippa Kaufmann QC and I had detailed knowledge of Worboys’ modus operandi, the extent of his offending and, his ability to manipulate so many women he picked up in his cab. He would present as an affable chatty chap who had just won some money on the lottery and would persuade them to take a sip of a celebratory drink which quickly rendered them unconscious and unable to prevent his sexual attack. We decided to bring a judicial review of the parole board decision, sceptical at that point that such a novel challenge could succeed. As a result of launching proceedings we were provided with the parole board dossier recording the reports prepared by officers and psychologists and the decision-making of the parole board panel.
The particular programme he had attended was subsequently shown to be worse than useless and had been scrapped in 2017 after it had been shown to actually raise rather than reduce the risk of offending.
Worboys had been sentenced in 2009 to an indeterminate sentence for public protection with a minimum tariff of eight years. Thus it was for the parole board to determine, after the minimum period, whether he was safe to release. We were expecting to discover something in the dossier which would somehow explain how the parole board came to its decision, but the more we read, the more perplexed we were with the recommendation for release. Worboys had in fact been attempting to appeal his conviction up until 2015 when he must have determined that there was little chance he would succeed, so switched tactic to showing remorse and engaging with a prison sex offenders programme in an effort to demonstrate he was a changed man. The particular programme he had attended was subsequently shown to be worse than useless and had been scrapped in 2017 after it had been shown to actually raise rather than reduce the risk of offending.
Following a couple of days of legal argument, the High Court determined that the decision to release Worboys was wrong. The court accepted our argument that it was wrong of the parole board to only take into account the 19 offences against 12 victims that Worboys was convicted of. At the time Worboys was prosecuted, the Crown had decided to select just a sample of cases rather than prosecute each one. This was a tactical decision and one apparently based on a proportionate approach. However, he had attacked at least 105 women and as a result of the publicity about the decision to release, several more victims had come forward.
The treatment of Worboys by the parole board contrasted with that I have observed in relation to their assessment of risk of women serving life sentences for the murder of abusive partners. Because many such women have been mentally damaged as a result of suffering a history of sexual abuse and domestic violence, they are often judged as unstable and potentially a risk. I have even seen such a risk as defined as arising in circumstances where they might get involved in another relationship with a man. I am not aware however of a single case where a woman previously convicted of a homicide has gone on to kill or seriously harm a man or anyone again. Sadly there are far too many cases of men with a history of domestic violence or sexual offences who have, following release from prison, gone on to rape and kill. A couple of examples of such cases I had some involvement in included the murder of Lisa Skidmore and of five-year-old Alex Malcolm. Both murders might have been prevented if the seriously under-resourced probation service has properly supervised the offenders who were recently released from prison.
We know our criminal justice system is in crisis, that it fails to protect women from male violence and that only a tiny proportion of women who report rape or domestic violence get close to justice. We also know, as I have written about in previous stages of this manifesto, that many women who are victims of domestic abuse or sexual exploitation are criminalised. Part of the reason is that some crimes are far easier to investigate and prosecute than others. If a woman stabs someone who had subjected her to brutal violence or if she is found to be storing drugs that her coercive and controlling boyfriend had made her hold for him, she is likely to be ‘bang to rights’ and can be easily convicted. On the other hand a serial rapist who spikes women’s drinks so they cannot remember exactly what happened to them, can get away with it again and again because the lack of memory can make such cases difficult to investigate and prosecute.
We should be focussing the inevitably limited resourcing of criminal justice agencies on tackling those that present the most serious risk, rather than the easy targets who are very often themselves victims of crime.
One way of addressing the crisis of male violence against women and girls and the legion failures of the criminal justice system to tackle this, would be to recalibrate the system so that real risk of harm is addressed. We should be focussing the inevitably limited resourcing of criminal justice agencies on tackling those that present the most serious risk, rather than the easy targets who are very often themselves victims of crime. This requires an understanding of the underlying power dynamics of sexual and domestic violence when considering who represents the most serious risk.
Watch this space: Next week (8th March) we will be launching a new project to challenge wrongful convictions of murder, and other crimes, as a consequence of being victims of violence and abuse. From 8th-15th March, donations given towards this project will be matched by The Big Give. So if you give £10, we will receive £20!
