John Worboys could have victims from Bournemouth to as far north as Blackpool, survivor ‘Sarah’ has told the Daily Mail’s Deep Dive podcast.
Sarah, one of the 12 women whose cases led to Worboys’ 2009 conviction, sought to remind viewers of ITV’s new drama about the serial rapist, Believe Me, that there is credible evidence he had ‘widened the net’ of his offending well beyond London.
Speaking to broadcaster Nicola Thorp, Sarah, joined by Carrie Johnson – fellow victim and wife of former Prime Minister Boris Johnson – urged women who believe they may have been attacked by Worboys to contact police, as more victims coming forward is crucial to keeping him behind bars.
Last month, Worboys, now 68, was again refused parole. Despite being convicted of attacks on 16 women over an eight-year span, he came frighteningly close to release back in 2018, when a private Parole Board hearing approved his application after just a decade behind bars.
Sarah and Carrie, who waived her right to anonymity in the process, fought tirelessly to have the decision overturned. Both have characters loosely based on them in the new ITV drama.
John Worboys could have victims from Bournemouth to as far north as Blackpool, survivor ‘Sarah’ has told the Daily Mail’s Deep Dive podcast
Between 2000 and 2008, Worboys used his licensed London black cab to drug and assault lone women, luring them to drink spiked champagne with a tale about a big casino win.
Carrie recently told the Daily Mail how she narrowly escaped assault by pouring out her first glass of spiked drink when Worboys wasn’t looking.
Sarah said: ‘It’s really important to point out that although the press focused his offending on London, there are reports coming through from women who say they have been assaulted in Bournemouth, where Worboys had a property, and Blackpool, where he worked.
Hello, I’m Alex Matthews, Editor of The Crime Desk.
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‘So, it’s not just London. I have heard a report from a lady in Blackpool who believes she was attacked by him there.
‘I don’t want people to watch the show and say, that sounds familiar or that looks familiar but it can’t have happened to me because I don’t live in London.
‘I do not think he solely attacked people in London, he widened his net a little bit.’
Many of those close to the case, including Sarah and Carrie, believe Worboys had many more victims than he was ever convicted for.
During his second trial at the Old Bailey in 2019, the court heard that Worboys had told a prison psychologist he had plied around 90 women with alcohol and drugged about a quarter of them.
He told the same psychologist that he had harboured fantasies about these crimes from as early as 1986, a full 14 years before his first convicted offence.
When Worboys’ original arrest was publicised, police took statements from far more women than were ultimately included in the 2009 prosecution.
The CPS selected just 12 cases to put before a jury. Many other women who reported to police at the time saw their cases dropped.
‘Sarah’, one of the 12 women whose cases led to Worboys’ 2009 conviction, sought to remind viewers of ITV’s new drama that there is credible evidence he had ‘widened the net’ of his offending well beyond London
Carrie Johnson told Deep Dive she believes the true number of women Worboys targeted could run into the thousands
Carrie told Deep Dive she believes the true number of women Worboys targeted could run into the thousands.
She said: ‘I had a girl who messaged me on Instagram, who told me she had a very similar story to mine.
‘She had gone to the police at the same time I had, but was told that they already had enough evidence by that point so they didn’t record the case. I wonder how many examples there are like that.
‘It’s not too late. You can call 101 and quote Safford and they will know exactly what you are talking about. Don’t feel like: ‘He’s gone to prison, it’s done.’ It’s not done.
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‘The way we got him last time was because he admitted to crimes between certain dates, and his dates were wrong because more girls came forward. I reckon his crime span was way longer than that.
‘We know he was a taxi driver from 2000 to 2008, that’s eight years of every night being in that cab picking up women. Hundreds, maybe thousands of women.
‘The kind of women that get in cabs, probably a lot of them are tourists, just here for business, they wouldn’t have known anything about it.
‘Not only that, before he was a cab driver, he was a stripper. I’ve had messages from two women now who say they were assaulted when he was a stripper, and before that he was an amateur porn star.
‘His whole life has been preoccupied with sex, and he preyed on women whose guard was down.’
Listen to Sarah and Carrie discuss the case by searching for Deep Dive now, wherever you get your podcasts.
