Former Metropolitan Police officer and serial rapist in modern UK history, David Carrick, 48, tried to kill himself while he was in custody, a court has heard.
Carrick was jailed on Tuesday for at least 30 years after he was given 36 life sentences.
The serial rapist, who carried out a number of rapes and sexual assaults on 12 women over a 17-year-period, was described as a ‘monster’ and ‘evil’ by some of his victims.
He carried out a ‘catalogue of violent and brutal’ sex attacks between 2003 and 2020, Southwark Crown Court heard.
Passing sentence, Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb said Carrick had made a ‘committed attempt’ to kill himself while on remand at Belmarsh prison last February.
Then moved to Rampton psychiatric hospital but was not found to be suffering from any mental disorder.
The judge told him: ‘You were driven to try to commit suicide as a self-pitying reaction to the shame brought on you by these proceedings rather than remorse.’
Carrick, who joined the Met in 2001 before becoming an armed officer with the Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection Command in 2009, used his position to gain the women’s trust and scare them into silence.
During the hearing Monday, the court heard he held a handgun to the head of one of his victims as he raped her and sent another a photograph of himself with a work-issue firearm, saying: ‘Remember I am the boss.’
The court also heard that Carrick used cameras in his home to monitor his victims and shut one woman in a small cupboard as punishment while ‘whistling at her as if she was a dog’.
Sentencing Carrick, Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb told him: ‘These convictions represent a spectacular downfall for a man charged with upholding the law and empowered to do so even to the extent of being authorised to bear a firearm in the execution of your duty.
‘Behind a public appearance of propriety and trustworthiness you took monstrous advantage of women.
‘You brazenly raped and sexually assaulted a number of women, some very brutally and you behaved as if you were untouchable.’
Carrick sat in the dock with his eyes closed and head bowed during the hearing in a packed courtroom, including some of his victims, and showed no emotion as he was sentenced
Carrick’s crimes were all carried out while he was a serving police officer.
He passed vetting checks to guard sites including embassies and the Houses of Parliament and completed training courses, including one on domestic abuse in 2005.
Carrick faced no criminal sanctions or misconduct findings and police chiefs across England and Wales have since been asked to have all officers checked against national police databases by the end of March.
Carrick, from Stevenage, Hertfordshire, had pleaded guilty to 49 offences spanning two decades.
Carrick admitted the 49 criminal charges, but some of the attacks are multiple incident counts, meaning they relate to more than 80 sexual offences, including at least 48 rapes against 12 women.
Carrick admitted raping nine of the women, some on multiple occasions over months or years, with many of those attacks involving violence that would have left them physically injured.
On Sunday, Metropolitan Police assistant commissioner Barbara Gray repeated the force’s apology to Carrick’s victims.
‘I am truly sorry for the harm and devastation he has caused them,’ she said.
‘We let them down and we failed to identify a man in the ranks of the Metropolitan Police Service who carried out the most awful offences.
‘He should not have been a police officer.’
