Just under two years since Wayne Couzens was arrested and charged with the abduction, rape and murder of Sarah Everard (his sentence of a whole life order was handed down to him in October of that year), the Metropolitan Police have admitted to then-ongoing investigations into two reported incidents of indecent exposure linked to him in the days leading up to the deadly attack. Two officers are now facing misconduct cases over the handling of these reports.
Of the two, one Metropolitan Police Constable will face gross misconduct charges over allegations that they breached police standards of professional behaviour for duties, and for alleged failings over the way inquiries were progressed into two incidents involving Couzens which occurred in February 2021.
At the time of the case which horrified the world and initiated long-overdue conversations about women’s safety, Couzen’s prior offences were not kept secret. Reports of two instances of exposing himself at a South London McDonald’s drive-thru to female staff were published in the press, the first on the 14th of February and the second on the 27th of February 2021 – just days before Sarah was murdered on the 3rd of March. After admitting to both charges in court this week (Monday 13th March, 2023) more of Couzen’s historical offences are under the spotlight again, including flashing a cyclist in November 2020 and a similar offence in 2015.
Perhaps unusually in cases of sexual violence, all these offences had been reported to police; all reports had included details identifying Couzens, including his partial and full car registration and, in the instances at McDonalds, his bank card details including his full name. And yet, none of this was enough to stop him from going on to commit his most grievous offence when he falsely arrested 33-year-old Sarah in south London.
We know that ‘minor’ sexual offences like flashing are a clear indicator that men will go on to commit more serious crimes in future – especially if they’ve got away with them. In Couzen’s case, he’d not only avoided prosecution for multiple instances of indecent exposure, but also failed to be reprimanded by his employer – The Metropolitan Police themselves – at all, and was serving in the parliamentary and diplomatic protection unit of the force at the time he was eventually arrested for murder.
As co-founder of the Reclaim These Streets movement Jamie Klingler writes on her popular substack Bold, Brazen Article, Sarah’s murder would have been entirely preventable if only the police departments concerned had acted with urgency and competency in properly investigating Couzens’ alleged offences. It is only now, long after Sarah Everard’s murder and as an epidemic of sexual crimes committed by serving officers is revealed that any staff are facing gross misconduct hearings for their failings in properly dealing with Couzens’ first offences.
In her article, Klinger also highlighted a recent blog post published to the British Transport Police's website by a female Chief Constable in the BTP that confirms there is currently no infrastructure in place to identify alleged perpetrators as serving police officers – so though relevant metropolitan police units were aware of the repeat offences in South London and the details of the perpetrator, there was no system for automatically flagging that individual as a metropolitan police officer.
‘On arrest, my DNA and prints would be taken and checked against national forensics databases,’ she wrote. ‘Even though I’ve provided my biometric samples to the police (my employer), the datasets are not run together to identify a match. As it stands today, I could be arrested by the police and nobody but me would know I am the police. In my view this is a priority issue for our attention. Otherwise, others could fall through the cracks and go on to do harm.’
As we have seen since the arrest and subsequent serial charges against Wayne Couzens’ colleague David Carrick this year, falling through the cracks is exactly what many in the police have done. But they haven’t simply ‘fallen’ – a culture of misogyny, racism and widespread indifference to sexual crimes mean that many individuals in the forces who’re now facing disciplinaries, dismissals and arrests for historical offences were actively targeting those cracks, relying on police shortcomings and the discretion of their mates to routinely abuse positions of power and get away with escalating crimes.
Who is Wayne Couzens?
Wayne Couzens is the former serving police officer who, in March 2021, used his police warrant to falsely arrest 33-year-old Sarah Everard walking home during lockdown and abduct her, before raping and murdering her and burying her burned body in a wooded area in Ashford in Kent.
How did Wayne Couzens get caught?
Couzens was arrested five days after Sarah was first reported missing by her boyfriend on the 4th of March. According to reports, a bus camera captured the moment she was intercepted by a hire car that was later linked to Couzens after he used his personal details to make the hire, and CCTV and ANPR cameras were able to track the Vauxhaull Astra’s journey to Kent. Couzens returned the car the next day and called in sick to his following shifts on the police force with stress.
Where is Wayne Couzens now?
Couzens is serving his whole life order – meaning he will die in jail – at HMP Frankland in County Durham. A whole life order is a more severe jail sentence than a life sentence, where there is usually an opportunity to appeal for early release after serving a minimum term. The Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe and Moors murderers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley were also handed whole life orders.
Wayne Couzens wife
Wayne was married to Ukrainian national Olena Couzens nee Obukhova for fifteen years before his arrest and has two children with her.
The judge sentencing Couzens at his trial said, ‘Your wife and children, who on all the evidence, are entirely blameless will have to live with the ignominy of your dreadful crimes for the rest of their lives.'