A public inquiry into the police officer whose rape and murder of a woman horrified the nation concluded on Thursday that without a sweeping overhaul of failed vetting procedures, there was nothing to stop another similar case arising.
Wayne Couzens, 51, whose job was to guard diplomatic premises in London, is serving a full life sentence in jail after being convicted of the 2021 rape and murder of Sarah Everard, who he abducted from a London street using his police credentials to force her into his car.
The report found that Couzens should never have been given a job as a police officer and chances to stop the sexual predator were repeatedly ignored and missed, an inquiry has found. The Met it added overlooked his repeated indecent exposure.
Wayne Couzens was reported to police eight times before he went on to murder Sarah Everard the evidence has found and that his deviant behaviour may have started almost 30 years before the abduction, rape and murder of Sarah Everard and includes a second alleged kidnapping,
The family of Sarah Everard said they believed the 33-year-old died because Wayne Couzens was a police officer, adding: “She would never have got into a stranger’s car” as they welcomed the inquiry’s findings
“It is almost three years now since Sarah died. We no longer wait for her call; we no longer expect to see her” they added in a statement
“As a family, the Inquiry has helped us, not just because of its significant findings, but because its implementation made us feel that Sarah’s life was valued and her memory honoured. Her death has not been dismissed as a tragic event to be acknowledged with sympathy and then forgotten – questions have been raised and actions taken to investigate how this tragedy happened. As a family, we have not had to fight for answers and, for this, we are very thankful.”
James Cleverly said Everard’s murder was a ‘gut-wrenching betrayal, an abuse of power of the most grievous kind’.
The Home Secretary told the Commons that he will ‘carefully consider’ the report’s sixteen recommendations, including the Met’s vetting process, with a number already being implemented in some form
