John Worboys' victims win human rights case against police

[Xenophile]

Apologies for the Guardian link

Some justice at least. And feminist activism at it's finest.

I'm very pleased for the victims, and I''m also relieved for all of us. Imagine the future if they had lost.

very good news - thanks for spotting that.

Speaking after the ruling, DSD, who was attacked in 2003, said: “I want to tell the police: ‘You had the procedures in place now start doing your job. Stop using public money to fight [this case against liability]. Had you done your job properly there would not have been 105 victims. I can take the one victim. I can’t take the 105.’”

Given that woman a fucking standing ovation. How brave those two were to pursue this.

Very pleased to read this - but frankly I'm shocked by the Met Police's response to it.

The Metropolitan police warned that the decision means the force will have to shift resources away from areas such as fraud in order to comply with the judgment.

Which to me reads like, 'oh you uppity women actually want us to work on your rape cases, do you? We have important fraud to investigate, don't you realise?'

They failed so many women. And then the Parole Board failed them again.

A small piece of good news. At last there will be some redress for victims after the dreadful practices evidenced in this case which enabled him to offend for as long as he did.

The parole case hearing is next month, so with luck, there might be good news there too.

That's a shitty response from the Met. Although I'm not surprised.

If you do your job that badly then there should be consequences.

Obviously investigating fraud is way more important than preventing hundreds of violent rapes would have been

Could this be end up being something of an own goal? I can't see how it wouldn't be the same for men asserting that their human rights have been violated under article 3 when police refuse to even investigate false accusations?

According to the article, the total awarded to the victims was £41,250. Which is hardly a fortune between the two of them.

I'd certainly be interested in seeing the Met's legal bill that they have run up in fighting this.

I think the issue the police had with this was not that they don’t want to investigate rape properly - on the whole they do. I think they’re concerned about keeping control of operational priorities when their resources are scarce. I see that point but the failures in the worboys case seem to have been so utterly appalling they can’t possibly have been within any reasonable approach by the police, so I think this is the right outcome.

The Met has plenty of form for being totally shit wrt sexual violence. I'm glad they've been pulled up on it for once.

I'm delighted about this. Maybe this will be the momentum they need to start investigating sexual violence effectively.

I'm glad this has happened

but I still want to know WTF the Parole Board are on and what their excuses are for releasing him.

The Met are pretty dreadful. I really hope things improve. I remember this case from a while back:
www.channel4.com/news/sapphire-sex-crime-unit-guilty-of-shocking-failings

Good on those brave women! Accountability at last. Now they need to keep the fucker in jail for the rest of his life.

Agree that comment from the Met about fraud is fucking appalling and says it all.

Also phrasing like this is starting to get on my nerves - this isn't the worst example i've seen today which was around the police "finally having enough evidence to arrest him":

"After his conviction, police said 100 women may have been attacked."

It makes it sound like they were proactive and did invetigation and stuff. It should say more like "The police said that over the years more than 100 women have lodged complaints about Warboys" or something. They had all the reports - all they had to do was make a fucking list hardly primo police work.

The litany of fuckups in this case is disgusting and the comment from the Met says it all - money is more important than the bodily integrity of women.

I am SO HAPPY with this result, and the women who have brought this and kept at it despite being victimised by warboys and then ignored by the police and then have teresa may encourage the met to take them to court after the first decision - they are amazing women.

The system let them down and then increased their ordeal (looking at you TM at the very top) when they had the audacity to complain. They are amazing - such strength.

Is this a general pushback against #metoo type stuff and women and girls reporting more? We know from previous statements that they would rather spend their time on "proper" crimes, this is just a stark statement to women and girls isn't it, don't come to us,we don't care. Whatever the courts say, we're telling you now, we're not interested.

I heard one if the women on PM on Radio 4.

Her whole reasoning was that if the police had believed her, tens if not hundreds of other women would not have been attacked. She said the police just refused to believe a black cab driver would do this, even though there were other witnesses!

She’ said she has suffered her whole life, not even telling her husband for many years and I’m so pleased for her today.

Is it just me? BBC says

"Worboys was convicted of 19 offences in 2009, when he was ordered to serve at least eight years in jail.

But the Met believe he may have carried out more than 100 rapes and sexual assaults on women in London between 2002 and 2008."

I feel like that makes it sound like the police looked into it. It should be, to my mind, more than 100 women reported attacks to the police. Which is what it means, and of course they ignored a fair few of them and basically told them to fuck off. Hence this court case and the women winning.

It seems like even when they have been proved to be shit the language is still supportive, subtly, like with teh abusive men a lot of the time as well I suppose.

"The police had appealed against the original judgement in favour of the women, arguing their duty was fulfilled simply by having in place practices and procedures to investigate."

And then not following those policies and procedures and actually investigating anything?

Who the fuck thought that defence was worth spending £££ of public money over, in a fight against 2 women who they agreed had been raped?

"He said resources may be shifted from community policing to serious crimes as forces felt they had to investigate more thoroughly and document all decisions about taking investigations forward."

?

This is seen by the police as a bad thing? That they have to properly investigate and document serious crime?

Jesus wept.

Whole thing, statements from police all round, show that the attitudes that sent these women away when they reported these crimes all these years ago are still prevalent.

So it sounds like being forced to properly investigate is in fact needed, because clearly they still don't feel that rape is a crime worth their bothering with. not when there's fraud and community policing needing doing which as they state comes way up the priority list ahead of literally scores of women being raped by a serial sex offender.

Sorry for multiple posting I'm so angry with the shit they are coming out with.