Rapist police officer David Carrick carried out 'systematic catalogue of brutal sexual offences'

David Carrick, a serving Metropolitan Police officer, used his “power and control” to carry out a “catalogue of violent and brutal” sex attacks, a court has been told.

The 48-year-old constable was sacked from the force after pleading guilty to attacking 12 women over 17 years - and being unmasked as one of the country's most prolific sex offenders.

Carrick, who joined the Met in 2001 and was later an armed officer in the Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection Unit, appeared on Monday in the dock at Southwark Crown Court, where he is being sentenced over two days for 49 charges, including 24 counts of rape.

Opening the case for the prosecution, Tom Little KC, said a large number of the offences had taken place during three controlling and coercive relationships.

He said two of the victims had been falsely imprisoned - one of them on at least ten occasions.

'Systematic catalogue of violent and brutal sexual offences'

Mr Little said: “If the offending had to be accurately and fairly summarised, it was systematic catalogue of violent and brutal sexual offences perpetrated on multiple victims.”

The prosecutor said it did not matter to Carrick who the victims were.

“She could be a new girlfriend, a long term partner, a police officer that he worked with or that he did not work with, a friend from a local sports club, his cleaner, a school-friend or a stranger,” he said.

“Where he had the opportunity he would rape them, sexually abuse them, assault them and humiliate them.”

Mr Little told the court that all of his victims were vulnerable in some way and Carrick used his position as a police officer to prey on them.

He said: “He frequently relied on his charm to beguile and mislead the victims in the first place, and would use his power and control, in part because of what he did for a living, to stop them leaving or consider reporting him.”

Carrick put gun to victim's head

Mr Little took the court through Carrick’s offending in chronological order, starting with his first victim who he attacked in 2003.

After meeting the victim in a bar, Carrick told the 20-year-old woman that he was the safest person she could be with because he was a police officer. Carrick then invited the woman back to his south London flat, where he then repeatedly and violently raped her.

The court was told that as she tried to get away, she had bitten his arm and Carrick had put a black handgun to her head telling her: “You are not going.”

After raping her for a first time, Carrick put his hands around her throat and told her that he was going to be the “last thing she saw”.

Mr Little said following the first rape, Carrick had sat her down and talked to her about her parents as if nothing happened. “He then pushed her down on the sofa and raped her again,” Mr Little said.

When he eventually let her go the following morning, Carrick kissed her on the cheek and stood naked at his door waving to her as if nothing had happened.

The woman went to A&E at King’s College Hospital, where she was found to have external and internal injuries.

'I just didn't talk about it to anybody'

Carrick’s second victim was a serving police officer and colleague in the Met.

They had been working together in Spring 2004 when he invited her to his home in Tooting, south London, where he anally raped her.

The victim did not report the attack at the time, eventually telling police she had felt a “degree of shame”.

In her police interview after she came forward, she told officers: “I just didn’t talk about it to anybody, thought it’s not happening again, toughen up and move on.”

The next offences took place between 2008 and 2009, when Carrick was involved in a relationship with an 18-year-old barmaid, who later joined the Met as a constable. He was her first boyfriend and her first sexual partner, the court was told.

Carrick first raped her during a holiday to the Caribbean, but the couple later bought a house together in Stevenage.

He continued to rape her during their relationship until she eventually moved out of their house and went to stay with colleagues.

On the night she moved out, Carrick brandished a knife at her and slashed her work shirts. Neighbours called the police, but Carrick hid the knife before the police arrived and no further action was taken.

Nine opportunities missed to stop Carrick

Carrick pleaded guilty to 43 counts in December and a remaining six at a hearing at Southwark Crown Court last month.

He was arrested in October 2021 after a woman came forward to Hertfordshire Police to report that she had been raped by a serving Met officer.

Following the publicity of his arrest and charge, more women came forward with allegations of sexual abuse, rape and domestic violence.

It has now emerged that police missed no fewer than nine opportunities to identify Carrick’s patterns of behaviour and offending.