Believe Me writer Jeff Pope talks his John Worboys drama: "I was very aware that I’m a man writing a story about women"

This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.

When “black cab rapist” John Worboys was arrested for drugging and attacking 12 women, there was widespread revulsion. His victims believed they were being taken home safely, having flagged down the licensed vehicle, yet they woke up from their journey confused and groggy, with a growing realisation that something terrible had happened to them.

A new ITV drama, Believe Me, gives a voice to those women who spent years fighting for the police to investigate the crimes. Its writer Jeff Pope – who has established himself in the true-crime drama genre, having also executive-produced See No Evil: the Moors Murders, This Is Personal: the Hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper and The Reckoning about Jimmy Savile – says the show really opened his eyes to the fear that ordinary women live with every day.

“I was very aware that I’m a man writing a story about women,” he says. “I talked to all the female members of my family about it. A friend’s wife told me that if a man is walking behind her on a dark street, he should cross the road so that she doesn’t feel like she’s being followed. I do that all the time now, but I wouldn’t have thought of it before.

“Writing this opened the door to a room I didn’t know existed. This was a wake-up call. Women have to be able to get home safely, for God’s sake.”

Believe Me, starring Daniel Mays as Worboys, follows the story from the viewpoint of two victims, whose identities are protected but are known as “Sarah” and “Laila”. They got into Worboys’ taxi where he struck up conversation and pretended he’d just won a lot of money, before begging the women to drink a glass of champagne to help him celebrate. Despite initially refusing, they relented, unaware the drink was laced with sedatives.

Pope, who talked to the real-life victims, explains how Sarah’s story unfolded after a night out in 2003, her first since giving birth to her son. He says, “She’d got into a black cab, which is such a big thing with women. She had the money for the cab in a special compartment of her bag. She was doing all the right things.

“In the show we have a long sequence between Sarah and Worboys, which was important because I wanted the audience to understand how it happened. You can’t truncate it and have the driver giving Sarah a drink because you’d think, ‘Wow, that was silly of her to drink it.’ You have to play it out to show her saying no three times, and all of the detail of that conversation.

“You have to understand how these women got into this situation. They hadn’t done anything stupid. They hadn’t got into an unlicensed cab. None of them said ‘Yes please’ to the drink straightaway.”

Peaky Blinders and Slow Horses actor Aimee-Ffion Edwards, who plays Sarah, says she immediately related to the scripts as she’s often been aware of her vulnerability as a lone woman. “You’d struggle to find a woman who hadn’t had some sort of experience of feeling unsafe at night,” she says. “That scene is important because viewers need to imagine what it’s like to be in the back of that cab trying to gain some control, or working out the best way to handle the situation. You don’t want to get out of a cab in the middle of nowhere.

“But the onus shouldn’t be on women to stay safe. Women should be allowed to walk down the street or get into a black cab without any fear.”

Pope adds that every aspect of the four-parter tells the story accurately, thanks to in-depth conversations with Sarah and Laila, their lawyers, and serving police officers involved in the case, as well as court transcripts. “I was very lucky that the women were so open with me,” he says. “I wanted to let them have their voice, rather than imposing anything on them.

“I learnt a lot. One of the aspects of the story that really shook me is what women physically go through after reporting a sexual assault: the interviews, the intimate examinations. It goes on and on and on. It’s not like they’ve had a telly nicked, you know? It’s so draining for them.

“I spent a lot of the writing process in a foul temper, but you can’t let that spill onto the page because that would have done these women a disservice, to have done something manipulative or crude, to have conversations that you couldn’t prove. The approach was to let the material speak for itself.”

For that reason, the attacks aren’t shown, because the women can’t remember what actually happened to them: they only know they woke up bleeding, or with ripped clothes, or painful genitals.

But much of the dialogue in Believe Me is verbatim: one of the most shocking quotes is from a police officer who asks Laila, “What kind of woman are you? The kind of woman who wears red nail polish?” The quote reflects the attitude of many of the investigating officers who didn’t want to believe the women’s stories, as investigating rape is such a difficult exercise.

The police, in fact, used many excuses not to investigate properly: such as their argument that a black cab driver would not risk raping from his easily identifiable vehicle, to the fact Sarah had taken a small amount of cocaine during her night out.

Edwards, who spoke to the real Sarah before shooting the series, says, “Sarah said the way the police treated her was worse than the actual attack. Those feelings of horror and violation will always be there, but then she was gas-lit and that was the hardest bit. A lot of people have asked, ‘Were you shocked?’ The sad thing is that it makes your blood boil, but it’s not necessarily that shocking.”

“The Met guidelines say that women should be believed, but the police were trying to get them off their books, as it were,” Pope adds. “Why would they make this up? Imagine having this awful thing happen, then you think you’re on the path to justice, but that journey is even worse. There’s something fundamentally wrong there.”

In the series, as in real life, Sarah keeps knocking down doors to get the police to take her seriously. Eventually, in 2009, six years after her rape, DCI Tim Grattan-Kane was investigating another attack and noticed similarities between the cases, joining the dots and arresting Worboys. He was convicted of 19 offences, including one rape and 12 drugging charges – but the trial judge said he had carried out more than 100 rapes and sexual assaults.

In 2014, victims including Sarah and Laila took the Met Police to the High Court, accusing them of breaching their duty under Article 3 of the Human Rights Act by failing to act upon earlier opportunities to stop Worboys. They won the case and received payouts, with the judge accusing the Met of “systematic failures”.

Edwards says the years-long battle took an immeasurable toll on Sarah, yet she remains an inspirationally strong woman. “She was so open and generous and really funny when we spoke. She had me laughing within seconds and told me she was conscious of not wanting her children to live in a sad house. These women have to live with something huge and not allow it to affect the people around them. It’s silencing and isolating. It’s a long journey that continues to be their reality.”

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