The first known victim of the rapist Metropolitan police officer David Carrick has welcomed his life sentence, saying he is “no longer the big man with all the power”.
Alice, whose name has been changed to protect her identity, said she “encountered evil” the night Carrick raped her at gunpoint at his flat in 2003 when she was 20. She thought he would kill her as he squeezed her throat and told her he was the last thing she would see.
Carrick (48) was given 36 life sentences at Southwark crown court in the UK on Tuesday and will spend at least the next 30 years in prison for his 17-year crime spree. He pleaded guilty to 85 serious offences including 48 rapes against 12 women.
Alice, now 40, who was in court for the sentencing, told the Guardian: “I am glad he got life for not only what he took from me but also the other women. And I am sure there will be more to walk forward. He has taken 20 years from me so he deserves at least a life sentence.”
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She condemned Carrick for failing to show any remorse and for shaking his head as the judge, Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb, detailed some of his crimes.
“There’s no remorse from him, there never was,” she said. “What I saw over the last two days was a very weak, greying old man. And I wondered to myself: what was I terrified of? This weak, small man who stared at the floor for two days. And to disrespect us by shaking his head at charges listed was the final insult.
“I really hope his new inmates welcome him with the same level of respect he showed us. He is no longer the big man with all the power.”
Alice said Carrick looked at the public gallery where some of his victims were sitting. “He looked for a good couple of seconds at all of us to see who was there,” she said. “It was on the first day when he was coming back out. He looked around at all of us. You could see him totting it up in his head but there was no remorse.”
In an interview last week, Alice described how Carrick lured her to his flat in Tooting, southwest London, and locked her inside. She said he pointed a gun at her head and said “you are not going” before repeatedly raping her.
She spoke out about the harrowing ordeal because she is convinced there are more victims who have not yet been identified. She hopes her story might empower others to seek justice.
In a powerful victim impact statement read out in court by the prosecutor Tom Little KC on Monday, she said: “That night I felt I had encountered evil. For the past 19 years I’ve been lost in my own life mainly due to this one event.
“I distinctively remember his words: ‘Come on, you can trust me, I am the safest person you can be around, I am a police officer.’ I honestly thought he was going to kill me that night, I thought he was going to rape me and kill me and that my life would be over.”
Jess Phillips, the Labour MP and shadow minister for domestic violence and safeguarding, said the case had left victims feeling unsafe. She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “In the weeks of the Carrick case coming out, I had to talk down from a ledge a number of different rape victims who were being supported by the Met [London Metropolitan Police] from pulling out because they felt unsafe.”
Nicole Jacobs, the domestic abuse commissioner, said she was not convinced that police forces were taking the necessary steps to reform.
She told the programme: “My urgent call is to say we need to have a grip on this. I have written to the home secretary to say all police forces need to be showing the very practical steps they have committed to and been asked to do. I am not convinced that is happening yet.
“I don’t think the spotlight should be taken off the police, they have really got to prove and rebuild their trust with the public.” — Guardian