John Worboys: the Taxi Cab Rapist review - Victims given a chance to have their voices heard

A low but unmistakable moral outrage burned throughout John Worboys: The Taxi Cab Rapist (ITV). The documentary chronicled the serial sex offender’s years of attacks on unsuspecting women who had stepped inside his black cab on the presumption it was one of the rare places in a busy city late at night where their safety was assured. 

Instead, he would drug and assault his victims, dumping them outside their homes in a sick parody of his job as a cabbie. 

It was of course necessary to delve into the grisly particular of his crimes. But presenter Susanna Reid saved her real ire for the Parole Board and its ruling in January that, after just eight years behind bars, Worboys should be free to walk the streets. 

This was, in the least cynical sense, factual television-as-soap box, with Reid providing a platform for women whose lives had been destroyed and who couldn’t comprehend how their tormentor was now deemed fit to be released into society. 

There was an additional newsworthy component in that the broadcast, part of ITV's Crime and Punishment season, came a day after the Supreme Court ruled the Metropolitan Police had failed two of Worboys’s victims in its botched investigation into the case. 

The stories were horrific. Having rejected Worboys’s offer of alcohol “Fiona” – understandably none of the women waived their right to end anonymity – was encouraged to sip water and woke up in hospital, having been sedated and raped. “Stacey” was catatonic in her bed, with Worboys crouched over her, stroking her hair, when her daughter stumbled upon the scene.

Worboys had preyed with impunity for nearly a decade, with the police failing to connect the dots or, in several instances, even take his victims seriously. When they pulled him in for questioning after a student was found passed out outside her residence, officers fell hook, line and sinker for his matey routine. A knack of blokey banter permitted him to remain on the prowl. 

Questions were also asked of the Crown Prosecution Service, which sought just one rape conviction against Worboys. Had it pressed for more, his sentence might have been longer. However, these strands of the story ultimately took a back seat, perhaps because the interviews with police involved in the case dated from 2010. 

Worboys victim

Reid’s usual habitat is the Good Morning Britain couch alongside Piers Morgan. But she proved a steely interrogator in the field and was especially merciless confronting representatives of the Parole Board over Worboys’s imminent release. Defending this seemingly inexplicably decision wasn’t easy and Parole Board chief executive Martin Jones conceded it was time for greater transparency regarding how such conclusions were arrived at.

But viewers may nonetheless have found the Parole Board case short of compelling. “99.5 per cent of the time we get it right… But of course you can never be sure,” said Jones. Asked why a number of Worboys’s victims had learned he was to be released from news bulletins, National Probation Service executive director Sonia Crozier lapsed into corporate verbiage.

“It is with absolute regret that some of them weren’t able to engage in the scheme,” she said, sounding like a parody of an Apprentice contestant trying to stay in the boardroom. 

Reid delved into Worboys’s sordid past as a porn actor and male stripper who would force himself upon women. Yet she stopped short of cloaking the abuser in true crime glamour or of painting him as someone whose depredations merited deep contemplation. 

Her focus was the victims. Worboys kept a journal of the women he had attacked, including their addresses and phone-numbers, and those interviewed understandably fear he will attempt to track them down once out. One still suffers nightmares; another explained how a relationship had sputtered out after the assault.

 “Fiona”, meanwhile, was wracked with guilt over what she felt she might have done to protect those subsequently targeted by Worboys. These were scars that would endure long after the headlines have faded, the police bungling forgotten. For that reason and countless others, Reid was to be credited with, in an empathic, non-sensational fashion, giving these women the voice they had so long been denied.