Call it Torture: Sexual Offences, Human Rights and the Metropolitan Police

In her victim impact statement, Sarah Everard’s mother, Susan Everard said: “I am repulsed by the thought of Wayne Couzens and what he did to Sarah. I am outraged that he masqueraded as a policeman in order to get what he wanted”. But Wayne Couzens did not masquerade as a police officer. He was a police officer, and he used the power and knowledge that came with that role to abduct, rape and murder Sarah Everard, a crime for which he was convicted on 30 September 2021. David Carrick similarly used his role as a police officer to commit severe and aggravated sexual offences against 12 different women over 17 years, crimes for which he was convicted on 7 February 2023. These two extreme examples sit against a backdrop of numerous reports and investigations which have found the Metropolitan (Met) police to be a sexist and misogynistic institution – one in which police officers feel invincible and immune from detection in using their positions to commit sexual offences. Criminal law alone is not working effectively to stop this nor, it will be argued in this article, can it do so. This article demonstrates that both proper acknowledgment of victims’ suffering and desperately needed institutional and cultural change in the Met police can potentially be achieved by bringing human rights litigation against the police under the UK Human Rights Act 1998. The argument is made on the basis that sexual offences committed by police officers can constitute “torture” within the meaning of the European Convention on Human Rights.