11 Jun Met Police pay damages to woman after admitting rape investigation “brought the service into disrepute”
The country’s largest police force has paid five-figure damages to a woman who challenged its investigation into complaints of rape and domestic abuse she made against her then husband.
The woman, who is in her 40s and calling herself Emma to protect her identity, reported to officers in June 2021 that she had been raped by her husband two years earlier. The couple had since separated.
Emma told officers that her husband had been abusive towards her over several years. She said that during unwanted intercourse she had told him “this feels like rape” but that he had carried on regardless. She said her husband had told a friend that Emma had accused him of rape, and also that she had recordings of her husband telling their children “daddy is a rapist”. The Met closed the investigation after interviewing Emma but without questioning her husband, or gathering any other evidence. The trainee detective assigned to the case told Emma in an email that “no allegation of rape was made by yourself”. Emma replied “So me saying this feels like rape to him … and he continues … Is not classed as rape.” The trainee detective did not respond.
The Met continued to refuse to investigate even after Emma made complaints to the Met’s Directorate of Professional Standards over the force’s handling of her case.
After Emma contacted a women’s charity, the force agreed to investigate allegations of coercive and controlling behaviour by her estranged husband, but not rape. During a conversation with the male officer assigned to the investigation, which Emma recorded, she explained “I said to him this feels like rape. He should have stopped. Because your website says it’s the responsibility of someone who is asking for sex to see if they are consenting.” The officer responded “We know what rape is, that’s our job to know what rape is … saying “this feels like rape” … it’s kinda borderline isn’t it?” Emma responded “It’s not borderline…” The officer responded: “But it is”. The investigation into coercive and controlling behaviour was subsequently closed.
In January 2023, Emma launched a crowdfunding campaign to protect her against the risk of having to pay the Met’s legal fees if she was unsuccessful in an attempt to overturn its refusal to reopen the rape investigation in the High Court. The Met argued that closing the rape investigation was within its “very wide discretion”. She was unable to raise sufficient funds and so couldn’t pursue a claim for judicial review in the High Court.
In February 2024, after the Independent Office for Police Conduct directed a reinvestigation of her police complaint, the Met’s Directorate of Professional Standards concluded that the actions of the officers involved in the rape investigation had “brought the service into disrepute at a time when we are working hard to build bridges with the public and re-build the trust we have lost.” The officers had “closed this investigation when it would seem that you have made an allegation of Rape, which should have been further investigated.” Two junior officers, including the now former trainee detective, were referred to misconduct proceedings. The report found that a supervising officer was “no longer an employee of the Metropolitan Police however if they were a serving Detective Sergeant this complaint would be upheld on their part of the investigation.” The report confirmed that the rape investigation would be reopened and apologised “on behalf of the Metropolitan Police for failings caused by the Officers involved.”
At a misconduct meeting in December 2024, the former trainee detective said she hadn’t received any specific training in relation to the investigation of rape and that “I was just another number to them. I was just told to investigate. I’d not had any training on it“. She said that her decision to take no further action would have been different if she was to take it again. The Sexual Offences Investigation Trained (SOIT) officer who interviewed Emma said “my line manager wasn’t reviewing the case or anything like that.” The chair criticised the failure of the former trainee detective to attend the interviews, saying “That’s a basic of policing so I would expect more involvement from you, you can’t just not turn up …” The chair concluded that the two officers were not guilty of misconduct but that they should engage in ‘reflective practice’.
The Met subsequently agreed to pay Emma a five-figure sum of damages without admitting that its officers’ conduct had breached her human rights.
In April 2025, the reopened rape investigation was closed after the Met concluded that there was insufficient evidence to refer the case to the Crown Prosecution Service. In a further error, for which the Met has also apologised, Emma was not told that the investigation had been closed for several months due to “admin issues”. She was only told about the outcome after making a further police complaint about the lack of updates.
Emma said: “When I called the police in June 2021 and told them that my husband had raped me two years earlier, I was under no illusions about the potential hurdles that might stand in the way of seeing him brought to justice. I never imagined that the biggest hurdle would be the Met police itself. I still cannot get my head around how three supposedly specialist officers weren’t able to identify a complaint of rape. If a woman tells a man that what he is doing feels like rape that means she isn’t consenting and he should stop. If he carries on, that’s rape. It’s not complicated. I cannot believe that it took the police well over two years to recognise I had made a complaint of rape that needed to be investigated properly. I can’t believe that they instructed their lawyers to refuse my pleas to reopen the investigation, and to threaten me with legal costs if I tried to challenge that refusal in the High Court. Even after the Met reopened the investigation and apologised for its officers bringing the service into disrepute, it still didn’t admit breaching my human rights. Nothing about the way in which the Met has conducted itself in this case makes me think that it has learned anything, or changed in any way, since it told me in 2021 that what happened to me wasn’t rape.”
Gus Silverman, a solicitor at Deighton Pierce Glynn representing Emma, said: “The police failures in this case are shocking. They range from a basic failure to understand the legal definition of rape, through to serious failures in supervision and training. Perhaps the most worrying aspect is that even after the Met’s own in-house lawyers were presented with clear evidence that officers had botched their response to my client’s report of rape, they were instructed to dig their heels in and made Emma wade through a protracted complaint and litigation process to get even some semblance of justice. The Met should thank women like Emma who have the bravery and tenacity to challenge failed rape investigations, instead of aggravating the harm they have already suffered.”
ENDS
Notes for editors:
- Section 1 of the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1992 prohibits publication of any information which is likely to lead members of the public to identify an alleged victim of sexual offences, including rape. An anonymity order has been made in this case.
- On 15 December 2022, a Home Office review identified “widespread investigative failings” by police forces including the Met in relation to complaints of rape, with investigators lacking “sufficient specialist knowledge about sexual offending.” The review found that allegations of rape by current or former partners were associated with particularly low charging rates, with only 1.2% of such complaints made to one force resulting in charges.
- In June 2022, the Met was placed in special measures after HM Inspectorate of Constabulary raised multiple concerns including an unacceptable standard of recording crimes, finding that “not all reports of rape are correctly recorded”. The Inspectorate also noted a “high proportion of inexperienced staff”, and a lack of effective supervision.
- In March 2023, the Casey Review concluded: “There has been a significant increase in the willingness to report crimes against women in recent years. However, the response by [Metropolitan] police is not good enough. Victims will be less likely to report such crimes unless their response improves.” Officers were found to be “overworked, overwhelmed, under-supported and lack specialist services.”
- Requests for interviews and further information should be directed to bristoladmin [at] dpglaw.co.uk.
