Part one of an inquiry into the murder of Sarah Everard has highlighted killer Wayne Couzens' alarming history and how he should never have been a police officer. Sarah Everard's family has welcomed the findings.
The Home Office-commissioned inquiry – undertaken by Dame Elish Angiolini – found there were repeated missed opportunities to stop Couzens within the police force. In fact, he had been reported to the police eight times before he attacked and murdered Sarah.
Couzens' career in the force began in 2002 when he joined Kent Police as a special constable, followed by a stint as an officer with the Civil Nuclear Constabulary in 2011 before moving on to the Met in 2018. The report found that his disturbing liking for extreme pornography and examples of alleged sexual offending dated back to 20 years prior to Everard's death in 2021, throughout his time in the force.
“It has become clear that Couzens' terrible crimes were not committed in isolation but were the culmination of a trajectory of sexually motivated behaviour and offending,” it read. It also revealed that this behaviour was repeatedly missed by Kent Police, the Civil Nuclear Constabulary and the Metropolitan Police and that all “could and should have stopped him.”
Reports of indecent exposure by the police officer in 2015, 2020 and 2021 were mishandled and, thus, ultimately ignored. Couzens was even found to repeatedly expose himself in the few days before he murdered Everard at a McDonalds in Swanley, Kent. These, again, were mishandled. "The police officers who responded to those victims were not adequately trained, equipped or motivated to investigate the allegations properly," the report read.
More alarmingly, the report also details several other very serious incidents before he was in the police force, most shockingly including a “very serious sexual assault of a child barely in her teens" in the 1990s and a kidnap attempt at knifepoint of a woman in North London in 1995. Victims came forward following his arrest for Sarah Everard's murder after recognising Couzens.
Police culture was questioned as a whole in the report, which looked to sexist and misogynistic behaviour as a worrying catalyst for more violent crimes. It is thought that Couzens had been given the nickname ‘the rapist’ while working in the police. “As long as vile behaviour and deeply abusive language are normalised and accepted as 'banter' in policing culture and elsewhere, people like Couzens will be able to commit atrocious crimes undetected.”
Dame Elish explained that “without a significant overhaul, there is nothing to stop another Couzens operating in plain sight” and thus made 16 recommendations for change. These include a specialist national policy to be established for investigating all sexual offences – including non-contact – by September 2024. "Now is the time for change," Elish added, encouraging “all those in authority in every police force in the country to read this report and take immediate action.”
As mentioned, the family of Sarah Everard (Sue, Jeremy, Katie and James Everard) have welcomed the findings of the report, sharing in a statement: “We strongly support the recommendations that Lady Elish has made and trust that these will be implemented forthwith. We cannot get Sarah back, but positive changes give hope for the future and will be of benefit to others.”
They added, commenting on the fact Couzens was ever allowed into a position of power: “We believe that Sarah died because he was a police officer – she would never have got into a stranger’s car.”
The upcoming second part of the inquiry will look into whether there's a “deep-rooted culture in policing in which finding reasons not to pursue a crime is preferred over any attempt to build a successful case for prosecution.”
Our thoughts remain with Sarah’s loved ones.
