There are certain headlines that cut through the noise and stop you in your tracks. They are so absurd, so staggering, so unthinkable, they’re lodged permanently in your memory.
That’s exactly how I felt when I read the following headline on 4 January 2018: ‘”Black-cab rapist’ John Worboys to be freed from jail.”
I remember reading it at the time and thinking, simply: what?
Words escaped me. It seemed so nonsensical, as preposterous as it was cruel, that my eyes must have been deceiving me. For who would allow such a thing?
Because if that headline was correct, that would mean a man who had been convicted of 19 offences linked to 12 women – one rape, five sexual assaults, one attempted assault and 12 drugging charges – who is also believed to have drugged and/or assaulted more than 100 women while working as a black cab driver in London, would imminently be free to walk the streets again.
Surely not?
But no, a trip to Specsavers was not required. No sets needed adjusting.
After serving 10 years, including a period on remand – he had been given an indefinite sentence with a minimum term of eight years in 2009 – a Parole Board panel decided to green-light his release. The reasons were not made public but there could only be one logical conclusion to such a decision: he was no longer considered a danger to the women he would once again be living among.
Of course, there would be “stringent” licence conditions imposed on Worboys. He would have to report to probation staff every week and was banned from going near any of his victims.
But the fact remained: Worboys would walk among us.
Just a few weeks later, however, there was a landmark development that ensured Worboys has remained in prison to this very day.
Two of the women he assaulted, identified as ‘DSD’ and ‘NBV’ – played by Aimee-Ffion Edwards (‘Sarah’) and Aasiya Shah (‘Laila’) in ITV’s Believe Me – showed extraordinary strength and courage in launching a legal challenge that subsequently overturned the Parole Board’s decision.
Carrie Symonds, now Johnson, played by Miriam Petche, who was drugged by Worboys, also waived her anonymity after his trial to encourage other women to come forward, as well as using her press contacts to push for a review of the Parole Board’s decision to release him and helping to raise legal funds.
Their tireless efforts ensured that Worboys’s alleged offences were taken into account alongside the offences he had been convicted of when first sentenced, which were just a drop in the ocean of his heinous crimes. There were also huge question marks over whether he had truly been rehabilitated and no longer posed a threat to the public.
But after watching Jeff Pope’s true crime drama, how can anyone be in any doubt about the risk releasing a man like Worboys poses – back in 2019, in another 10 years’ time, or ever, for that matter?
Not that I was in any doubt about the need for him to remain behind bars when tuning into the series, which explores the traumatic, lifelong impact of his crimes through ‘Sarah’, ‘Laila’ and Carrie, and the landmark ruling that kept him in prison.
Significant time is also spent outlining the negligence and incompetence of the Met Police, who failed to catch Worboys long before they eventually did and, in doing so, left him free to continue sexually assaulting women on a horrifying scale.
Had the Met done their job, countless women would never have crossed paths with Worboys.
But when you see his sickening crimes laid out in front of you – and in just the right amount of detail, so as not to be voyeuristic, but to leave you in no doubt about the horrors of his deviant abuse of so many women, some of whom still may not have come forward – Believe Me’s stance is clear: to allow Worboys, one of Britain’s most prolific sex attackers, to be released would be an astronomical risk.
When you watch it all play out – Pope’s writing is based on extensive research and interviews with some of the real-life women he harmed – when you see how easily he dehumanised scores of unsuspecting women who climbed into his cab, women he carefully chose because of their vulnerability as they left clubs and bars buoyant after evenings with friends, or stood alone at bus stops, before dumping their limp bodies on doorsteps or at the side of the road and driving away to locate his next victim or heading home to rest, before setting out again the following night for his next hunt, it becomes a question with only one answer.
The premeditation – the rape kit he carried in the passenger footwell containing alcohol laced with Temazepam or sleeping tablets, more prescription drugs, plastic gloves, condoms and a vibrator; the lies he scribbled on sheets of paper – he claimed that some of the women he had attacked had actually sexually assaulted him; the initial refusal to admit his guilt… it all leads you to wonder: will releasing Worboys ever be a risk worth taking?
Are women’s lives really worth that little?’
But that’s not the only thought that should be top of mind. Worboys stole so much from so many. The physical harm he subjected those women to triggered profound emotional and psychological trauma that certainly doesn’t define them, but is something they will carry with them forever. In the drama, we see the impact it has on their relationships with others and with themselves, as well as their educational and career prospects. Without warning, the ground had irreversibly shifted beneath their feet, and the pain of that did not subside when they left his cab. Instead, it deepened and grew with each passing day, compounded by the failures of the Met Police.
Worboys violently upended their lives – and to such an extent that, in the cases of ‘Sarah’ and ‘Laila’ in particular, they struggled to imagine a future beyond the trauma he inflicted.
So it’s not just about whether it is safe to release him, it’s about justice and ensuring that the victims, not the perpetrators of crime, are at the very core of that decision-making. And that’s what Believe Me does so effectively.
Anyone who watches the series – including Parole Board members and judges – will surely have their answer, such is the power and impact of drama when a writer like Pope is holding the pen.
Not only does Believe Me honour the women central to this case and ensure their stories are never forgotten, it also ensures that the extent and violence of Worboys’s crimes are never forgotten. When true crime is made for the right reasons, as it is here, and through the right lens – the victims were always top of mind for Pope, and he has spoken about having no interest in understanding what motivated Worboys – it plays a vital role in commemorating, in the here and now, while also holding institutions to account. The Met Police’s initial denial of any wrongdoing in ‘Sarah’ and ‘Laila’s’ cases is, as Sarah says, “worse than the crime itself”.
But just as crucially, it also ensures that public opinion and pressure in the fight for what is right never wanes.
Worboys was given two additional life sentences with a minimum term of six years in 2019 for attacks on four more women, which he admitted. So it seems unlikely, certainly at this juncture, that he will be freed from prison. There’s a strong possibility that he will never be released.
But that was probably also a widely held belief eight years ago when the Parole Board decided he was fit to leave prison. Who is to say that this June, when he undergoes a public parole hearing and a panel once again considers whether he is suitable for release, or to be transferred to an open prison, that history will not threaten to repeat itself?
Considering Worboys as a free man is a deeply unsettling and rage-inducing prospect. It boils and chills one’s blood at the same time. But Believe Me has almost certainly played a role in ensuring that will not happen – and that there would be a tidal wave of public fury if it does.
Read more:
- Believe Me is more impactful for one key reason – and true crime dramas should take note
- Line of Duty star reveals he “underestimated” how much embodying Believe Me predator would “take its toll”
- Believe Me writer on spotlighting victim’s stories, not John Worboys: “These women went through the most horrendous process”
Episode 2 of Believe Me airs on ITV1 at 9pm on Monday 11 May, with episodes 3 and 4 available to watch on ITV1 at 9pm on Sunday 17 and Monday 18 May. All four episodes are available to stream now on ITVX.
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