Two victims of John Worboys have won their claim for compensation from the Metropolitan police after the supreme court ruled that the force had failed to carry out an effective investigation into the serial sex attacker.

The judgment sets a far-reaching precedent for police liability by allowing victims to argue that they have been subjected to inhuman or degrading treatment under article 3 of the European convention on human rights.

The claim was brought by two of Worboys’ earliest victims, who reported attacks to the police in 2003 and 2007. Due to what the court said were significant errors, officers failed to charge the London black-cab driver at that stage.

A later review of sexual assault cases by the police finally identified Worboys’ pattern of drugging and assaulting female passengers. After his conviction, police said 100 women may have been attacked.

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

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Sir Craig Mackey. Photograph: Will Oliver/EPA

The deputy commissioner of the Met, Sir Craig Mackey, said: “We have always accepted that serious mistakes were made in this investigation and it was only the courage of the victims coming forward, including these two claimants, that enabled us to finally convict Worboys.

“The ... appeal to the supreme court was not based on factual differences between us and the victims, but on the appropriate interpretation of European human rights law. There is no doubt that it will have implications for how we resource and prioritise our investigations.”

However, Sarah Ricca, a solicitor for women’s groups who intervened in the case, said forces had for years been paying compensation and apologising for cases where there were significant mistakes.



The two women in the case, known only as DSD and NBV, were initially awarded compensation by the high court totalling £41,250. The Met police failed to overturn the awards in successive appeals.

The women have also brought separate judicial review proceedings against the Parole Board, challenging the decision to release Worboys after 10 years in prison.

The 60-year-old was convicted in 2009 of 19 offences against 12 women, including one count of rape.

Speaking after the ruling, DSD, who was attacked in 2003, said her message to the police was: “You have 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.”

Harriet Wistrich, the solicitor who represented the women, said: “It was not a lack of [police] resources that failed these women. It was a lack of belief [among police officers].”

Wistrich said it was unlikely that Worboys’ other victims would be able to bring claims against the police because of a statutory time limit on claims.

Debaleena Dasgupta, a lawyer with the human rights group Liberty, which participated in the case, pointed out that Theresa May, when home secretary, had “intervened against John Worboys’ victims before the supreme court had even accepted” it would hear the case.

“We need victims of rape to be able to go to the UK courts to have those rights vindicated and that’s something that the home secretary tried to stop.”

Asked about May’s role, DSD said: “I find it ironic that she has been backing the police yet only a few weeks ago she was saying she knew one of the victims and had sympathy with them. I find her on a personal level a bit of a hypocrite.”

Q&A Why is John Worboys being released and can the decision be reversed? Show Hide The Parole Board is able to assess the continued risk posed by prisoners based on psychiatrist and prison guard reports at Parole Board hearings that take place around once a year for each offender. Some of the hearings are oral, some of them written.

In November, a three-person panel of the Parole Board directed the release of Worboys, following an oral hearing. He will be released back into society under strict monitoring on a licence period of at least 10 years. Parole Board hearings are held in private and reasons for release are not made public, although a consultation is to be launched on how the body shares its decision-making with the public. The Parole Board is an independent body and its recommendation for Worboys’ release cannot be overturned by the Ministry of Justice. There are examples of Parole Board decisions being challenged by judicial review in the courts, but only when the prisoner has been denied release. Read a fuller explainer on John Worboys

Delivering judgment on Wednesday, Lord Kerr said previous decisions by the European court of human rights in Strasbourg “establish that the state is obliged under article 3 to conduct an effective investigation into crimes which involve serious violence to persons, whether they have been carried out by state agents or individual criminals”.

However, Kerr qualified that right by pointing out that “simple errors or isolated omissions will not give rise to a violation of article 3 … only conspicuous or substantial errors in investigation would qualify”.

He added: “The prospect of every complainant of burglary, car theft or fraud becoming the subject of an action under the Human Rights Act has been raised. I do not believe that this is a serious possibility.”



The five supreme court judges disagreed about whether police liability would arise only where there had been systemic failures. They decided by a majority that failures in the investigation alone, provided they were sufficiently serious, could also give rise to liability.