This article contains references to rape, sexual violence and child abuse.
On Wednesday, serial rapist and former Met officer David Carrick received an additional life sentence – on top of the 36 he is already serving – for sexual violence and child sexual abuse.
The 50-year-old was found guilty of sexually abusing a 12-year-old girl in the 1980s when he was 14, and raping a woman 20 years later. His crimes span decades, with over 71 offences from rape and sexual assault to coercive and controlling behaviour.
When the first wave of allegations broke in 2021, the public conversation followed a now-predictable pattern, with Carrick labelled a ‘monster’. This is commonplace.
Visceral and extreme language is often satisfying in its outrage. It is also profoundly damaging. By framing men who commit violence as otherworldly creatures lurking in the shadows, we reinforce the comforting illusion that they are exceptional, nothing like the men we know and love. But the reality is that perpetrators are overwhelmingly ordinary men. 6 in 7 rapes against women are carried out by someone they know. They are our colleagues, brothers, friends, partners. They sit beside us on the train, pass us in supermarket aisles, order flat whites in the local café.
Often, they are intertwined in our everyday lives and their behaviour is rarely called out. And yet, when the most extreme cases are exposed, we resort to metaphors that make those perpetrators seem alien. Language is not neutral. It actively shapes how we interpret behaviour, who we hold accountable, and what solutions we consider possible.
If someone is framed as a monster, they become deviant. The problem is relocated away from all of us, to one of them, becoming a case of individual wrongdoing rather than systemic failing. This absolves us from facing the uncomfortable truth: violence is not the work of mythical monsters but of humans shaped by cultural norms, gendered pressures, and the power structures that they exist within. A product of systems that can - and should - be both challenged and changed.
For survivors, the impact of this framing cannot be underestimated. Victims of abuse commonly experience self-doubt, a feeling only accentuated by the pressure for a survivor’s experience to look or sound a certain way.
Why didn’t I see the signs? How did I let something so unthinkable happen?
It also creates an image of a perpetrator which may not match with the vast majority of survivors’. If your attacker is charming, successful, intelligent, or popular, surely they aren’t the type to commit these acts? But here’s the thing - there is no type.
This time last year, the world watched in horror as Gisèle Pelicot stepped into an Avignon courthouse, waiving her anonymity to expose the heinous crimes committed by her husband, and 50 other men. International headlines spoke of the ‘Monster of Avignon’. Gisèle Pelicot herself fought back on this, refusing to label her ex-husband a monster. Instead, these men were products of a ‘macho and patriarchal society’ which ‘trivialises rape’. Pelicot’s words echo what survivors have said for years. Monstrous language protects perpetrators by suggesting that their actions were inevitable rather than chosen.
Violence exists on a continuum of entitlement, misogyny, and social attitudes that permeate everyday interactions. Dehumanising language obscures that continuum, creating a fictional divide between ‘good men’ and ‘monsters’, when in reality, these behaviours exist on a sliding scale, often normalised long before they escalate into criminality. I remember this clearly from my school years - boys rating girls out of ten, catcalling in the corridors, cries for help dismissed as mere attention seeking. These weren’t monsters, just ordinary children taught that turning a blind eye was the easier option.
Earlier this week, I spoke to the Community Champions alongside some of our team at Everyone’s Invited, the charity that exposed the scale of sexual harassment and assault in UK schools and universities back in 2021. One student, a bright and passionate 17-year-old, put it plainly:
“If we do not assess why this is happening, we cannot change the culture that is fundamentally ingrained in our schools, in our sport, in our media, and in our relationships.”
Words like ‘monster’ obscure the questions we desperately need to ask: what beliefs enable such behaviour? What cultural scripts are we teaching?
Crucially, reshaping language can reduce shame and stigma. In the last five years, we’ve seen terms like ‘gaslighting’ and ‘lovebombing’ come into the mainstream, enabling survivors to name their experiences. We must continue to dismantle the idea that perpetrators are inhuman, and use words grounded in reality: accountability, coercion, manipulation, misogyny, power, control.
The story we tell about perpetrators and survivors shapes the willingness of institutions, systems and individuals to change. It shapes society’s ability to recognise early warning signs before further harm occurs. And ultimately, it shapes whether we understand sexual violence as an inevitable horror inflicted by the few, or a preventable harm embedded in the behaviour of the many.
So often, in cases like David Carrick’s, the perpetrator is positioned as a monster - evil incarnate - as though that protects us from the harsher reality that rape and sexual violence are endemic across society. It doesn’t.
Sophie Lennox is Communications Manager at Everyone's Invited, a charity dedicated to exposing and eradicating rape culture.
