Why did police take so long to catch John Worboys? The disturbing real-life failures behind ITV’s Believe Me

ITV’s new four-part drama Believe Me, revisits one of Britain’s most shocking serial sexual assault cases – and the devastating institutional failures that allowed predator John Worboys to keep attacking women he picked up in his taxi for years.

Worboys, a licensed London black cab driver, later dubbed the ‘Black Cab Rapist’, was convicted in 2009 of drugging and sexually assaulting multiple women. Police later admitted he may have attacked more than 100 victims over more than a decade.

But one question still haunts the case: why did it take the police so long to stop him, given his first victim reported being drugged and attacked by him back in 2003?

The ITV series dramatises a pattern of disbelief, victim-blaming and investigative failures inside the Metropolitan Police – many of which were later confirmed by official reports, court rulings and watchdog investigations.

Here’s what really happened.

John Worboys was a London taxi driver who targeted women after picking them up in his black cab, often late at night after they’d been drinking.

He typically told victims he’d won the lottery or hit the jackpot at a casino, before offering them champagne laced with drugs. Many women later woke up confused, partially clothed or with signs they had been sexually assaulted, such as ripped tights or lubrication around their genitals.

In 2009, Worboys was convicted of 19 offences against 12 women, including rape, sexual assault and administering drugs with intent to commit assault. Prosecutors later acknowledged the scale of offending was likely far greater and as the case gained publicity, the police eventually identified more than 100 potential victims.

The real John Worboys

Yes. Multiple independent investigations later concluded the Metropolitan Police made serious errors for years before Worboys was finally arrested in 2008.

The ITV drama focuses heavily on the experiences of Sarah and Laila, whose characters are fictionalised but based on real complainants from women whose allegations were dismissed in the early 2000s.

In one particularly disturbing storyline, officers question whether Sarah’s memory gaps were simply caused by alcohol and drugs, implying she was an unreliable witness. The series shows police focusing on her sexual history, emotional reactions and behaviour after the alleged assault rather than investigating Worboys properly and missing key evidence, such as interviewing a witness.

That broadly reflects findings later observed and reported in The Guardian by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), which identified repeated investigative failings in at least several complaints against Worboys.

The IPCC found officers:

• failed to properly record allegations
• failed to identify links between complaints
• failed to pursue obvious lines of inquiry
• failed to treat victims seriously
• made incorrect assumptions about consent and intoxication

In some cases, allegations were not even formally recorded as crimes. One victim’s case was reportedly logged only as a “crime-related incident”, meaning it was not properly connected to wider investigations – a detail dramatised in Believe Me through Laila’s storyline.

The character of Laila in ITV’s Believe Me

One of the biggest criticisms levelled at the Met was its failure to recognise a clear pattern emerging across multiple reports.

Women repeatedly described a black cab driver who offered them champagne in the taxi, before they experienced becoming incapacitated. Many had memory loss and woke up injured or assaulted. Yet cases were often investigated in isolation.

According to later reports, different police units failed to share intelligence effectively, while officers dismissed victims as unreliable because they had consumed alcohol and because Worboys had dropped some victims home – which police reportedly viewed as proof he could not have harmed them, as it would put him at risk of being identified.

The ITV series repeatedly shows officers framing victims as drunk, confused or promiscuous rather than potential victims of a serial predator.

One particularly shocking element portrayed in the drama is officers asking victims questions implying consensual sex or risky behaviour explained what happened to them.

Official investigations later found elements of victim-blaming and poor understanding of sexual violence were embedded in the handling of the case.

Harriet Wistrich, the solicitor who represented two victims in a landmark civil action against police, said the failures reflected wider attitudes towards rape complainants at the time.

The women later sued the Metropolitan Police under the Human Rights Act, arguing officers failed to properly investigate serious sexual violence.

In a hugely significant ruling, the courts agreed.

Yes, and it made legal history. Two victims, known publicly only as DSD and NBV, whose real stories inspired Laila and Sarah’s in the ITv drama, brought a case against the Metropolitan Police arguing officers’ failures violated their human rights.

The Met fought the case all the way to the Supreme Court and lost. The court ruled police can be held liable for serious failures to investigate rape and violent crime properly.

The judgment was considered groundbreaking because it established that victims of violent crime could seek damages where police incompetence reached a sufficiently serious level.

Lawyers representing the women argued that if earlier complaints had been properly investigated, Worboys could have been stopped years sooner.

Laila, Sarah and Carrie in Believe Me

Investigators and legal experts later identified numerous missed opportunities.

According to reports:

• Police failed to search Worboys’ home early enough
• Officers failed to seize or properly follow up CCTV evidence
• Complainants were repeatedly not believed
• Toxicology evidence was not always properly acted upon
• Links between cases were missed for years

One key breakthrough reportedly came only after a police officer connected similarities between multiple complaints in late 2007, while speaking to a colleague. Soon after, specialist investigators launched a more coordinated inquiry – Worboys was arrested in February 2008.

Yes, the Metropolitan Police has since formally apologised to victims over failings in the investigation and it is reported that five officers were disciplined in connection to Worboys' victims' cases.

An IPCC report found multiple officers made serious mistakes, although most avoided misconduct charges because of limitations in police disciplinary rules at the time.

The case later became one of the most cited examples in Britain of institutional failures in responding to violence against women and girls.

It also fuelled wider debate about how rape victims are treated by the criminal justice system – particularly women whose accounts involve alcohol, drugs or fragmented memory. Today, the figures are still tragic: just 3% rape cases result in a conviction and more than half of women who do report a sexual assault say the experience of dealing with the police only compounded their trauma.

IPCC Commissioner for London, Deborah Glass, said of the investigation, "The number of victims in these cases and the public reaction to the police response has undoubtedly acted as a wake-up call to the Met in its response to the victims of sexual violence."

If you've been affected by the contents of this article, Rape Crisis England & Wales' 24/7 Rape and Sexual Abuse Support Line is open 24 hours a day, every day of the year on 0808 500 2222 with other support available on their website too.

All four episodes of Believe Me are on ITV Player