PC David Carrick put gun to head of first rape victim, sentencing hearing told

Police officer David Carrick’s first victim was repeatedly raped and humilitated after the Met PC put a gun to her head to stop her leaving his home, a court heard.

Carrick, 48, faces a possible life sentence after admitting a horrific catalogue of sexual abuse, violence, and torment towards women over the course of 18 years.

His offending stretches across almost his entire career in the Met Police, and the force has admitted several opportunities were missed to root him out.

Opening the sentencing hearing at Southwark crown court on Monday, prosecutor Tom Little KC detailed how Carrick’s first victim, in 2003, was attacked and sexually abused over the course of several hours.

And shockingly, when she went to hospital for treatment to the injuries she had suffered, she was talked out of reporting her ordeal to the police.

“She was asked who had raped her and she told the nurse that it was a police officer”, said the prosecutor.

But he said the woman only came forward to police after Carrick had been arrested in 2021 and revealed as a serial rapist.

“She told the police that the nurse in A&E told her that she needed to be ready if she was going to complain about it and that even if she did it might never go to court but that as she was young she might be better to try to put it behind her and move on”, said Mr Little.

“As a result she did not report the matter to the police at the time.”

Describing the ordeal, Mr Little said the woman had agreed to return to Carrick’s flat after they met in a bar in 2003.

“He told her he as the safest person she could be with and that he was a police officer”, said Mr Little.

The woman accepted a drink at Carrick’s one-bedroom flat, but she rejected his attempt to kiss her.

“She told him that she was not interested. He apologised and said he was sorry”, said the prosecutor. “They spoke for a while and then she said that she was going to go. She tried to open the door but she could not do so.

“The defendant told (her) that she could not go. He grabbed her by the hair and put his hand round her mouth, dragging her backwards.

“He threw her on the bed. He held her down. He grabbed her arms. By this time, he had taken his shirt off.

“She bit his arm and he put his hand behind the bed. He searched for something and then put a black handgun to her head and said to her ‘you are not going’.She froze.”

The court heard the woman did not know whether the gun was real.

Mr Little said Carrick went on to violently rape the woman repeatedly, including while she tried to use the toilet. “After doing that they went into the sitting room where he talked to her about her parents as if nothing has happened”, said the prosecutor.

“He then pushed her down on the sofa and began to rape her again.”

Carrick told the woman he had been “watching her for a while”, and when asked about the gun he said “he liked guns and that he could not have her screaming the place down”.

The court heard Carrick raped the woman one final time before letting her go, and then “stood naked and waved to her as if nothing had happened”.

She had a litany of injuries when she arrived at Kings College Hospital A&E, including bite marks on her neck and collar bone, bruised breasts, finger-marks on her buttocks and marks on her ankles from being dragged.

Clumps of hair were also missing.

In a victim impact statement, the woman said she believed the nurse - who said she had heard of women in similar position - had been trying to help, but left her “feeling like I didn’t have much choice”.

“That night I felt like I had encountered evil”, she said, of the attacks by Carrick.

“I honestly thought he was going to kill me that night. I thought he was going to rape me and kill me, and my life would be over.

“I felt lucky to be able tpo leave the next morning, I didn’t believe I would be doing so.”

She said she struggled to move on from that night, suffering from nervousness, regular upset, and she was frightened.

The woman recalled hiding from Carrick when she came across him in a bar seven months after the attack, and avoiding the police when they came to inform her of her brother’s death.

Carrick’s second victim had agreed to consensual sex with Carrick, but she said no when he tried to initiate anal sex.

“He said ‘This is what I do’. She told him no, it hurts”, said Mr Little.

The woman did not report the incident until 2021, and said in her victim impact statement that she feels “shame to a degree….especially with the fact it was anal rape”.

She said she would encourage other women to report a rape but was “not brave enough to do it myself”, and said she had resolved at the time in 2004 to “toughen up and move on”.

Carrick was arrested in October 2020 after a woman accused him of a date rape. News of his arrest then sparkled a slew of allegations from other women.

Some of the women revealed how Carrick used cameras in his home to monitor their movements, and he would be controlling over their behaviour.

One said Carrick called her a “whore” and a “prostitute”, and “told her that she belonged to him and that she must obey him”, said Mr Little.

“He threatened her with his Police baton and sent her a photograph of his work-issue firearm saying ‘remember I am the boss’.

“He told he that she should obey him and that if she did, he would give her an amazing life.”

The woman, who was barred from seeing her own son for a year, said Carrick demanded she go to the gym, controlled her eating habits, and branded her “fat” and “lazy”.

She was sometimes locked in a cupboard by Carrick as a punishment, said the prosecutor.

“They did not communicate whilst she was in the cupboard, he would stand outside and whistle at her as if she was a dog.”

The Met Police is under intense scrutiny over Carrick’s case, after it was revealed there had been a series of clues to his true character.

Mr Little said a woman who ended up in a coercive and controlling relationship with the PC had met him while he was socialising with other officers.

He said Carrick “came up to her and said that he was going to marry her”, and then one of the other officers told her: “Just ignore him he is just drunk”.

Carrick was known to colleagues as “Bastard Dave” and boasted about the moniker when he met women.

The court heard he used his police-issue handcuffs to restrain one of the women with her hands behind her back as he raped her.

Carrick now faces the possibility of a life sentence after admitting 49 charges between 2003 and 2020.

In brief mitigation, his barrister Alisdair Williamson KC said Carrick should be given credit for pleading guilty but he accepts “there can be no excuses, just a shadow of an explanation”.

He said victims had correctly identified that “good and evil dwell in the one skin” with Carrick, who is “testiment to how the abused may have become the abuser”.

“It is perhaps difficult if not impossible at the moment for him to consistently hold in his mind what he has done”, said Mr Williamson.

“But there have been on occassions a measure of true insight and remorse.

“A life sentence is the only sentence which meets the justice of this offending.”

Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb is expected to sentence Carrick, from Stevenage, on Tuesday morning.