Officers disciplined after failures left serial rapist free for five more years

Two police officers have been disciplined for misconduct after the bungling of an investigation that left the serial sex attacker David Carrick free for a five further years before he was finally arrested.

- Vikram Dodd

Carrick, while an officer with the Metropolitan police, waged a campaign of terror and humiliation against women starting in 2003 and lasting 17 years.

He committed at least 85 acts of serious offending, including 48 rapes, to become one of the worst sex offenders in modern history, before being arrested in 2021.

The two officers sanctioned were with the Wiltshire force, which in 2016 received an allegation naming Carrick and alleging he had abused a woman. The case was closed, a discipline tribunal heard, without the victim being spoken to, and without checks being carried out on the police systems.

They would have shown that at the time Carrick was already under investigation for another alleged attack on a different woman reported three days earlier.

Furthermore, the case was closed by Wiltshire without Carrick's force, the Met, ever being told.

One year later, Carrick passed revetting by the Met and his offending escalated, with further victims suffering. The Guardian understands that the woman at the centre of the 2016 complaint about Carrick would have supported action being taken against him.