Met officer raped teenager five years after warnings about his behaviour
The Metropolitan Police was warned that one of its officers was a danger to women five years before he raped a teenager.
On Tuesday, ex-Pc Adam Provan was jailed at Wood Green Crown Court for 16 years for a series of rapes spanning almost a decade.
In 2005, a female officer made a complaint to her bosses at the Metropolitan Police accusing Provan of stalking and harassment.
Five years later, Provan raped a 16-year-old girl on a blind date before forcing her to perform a sex act on him in a children’s playground.
The court was told that Provan had been given words of warning by the force after the female officer complained, but the victim did not wish to make a statement at the time.
In 2019, she came forward to report being repeatedly raped by Provan between 2003 and 2005
She told the court he terrorised her to such an extent she feared for her life.
Judge Noel Lucas KC told her the treatment she received from the Metropolitan Police was “abysmal”, adding: “I hope it never happens again. More than abysmal, it’s shocking.”
Following Provan’s sentencing, Lauren Taylor, the 16-year-old who was raped on “the date from hell”, has now waived her right to anonymity.
Ms Taylor, now 29, had agreed to go to the cinema with Provan after he lied about his age, saying he was 22 and not 31. He also told her he was a police officer.
Instead, Provan took her to woods, where he had sex with her even though she repeatedly told him no.
Speaking of her ordeal, she said: “Basically he raped me. I remember holding on to the tree. I was kind of hugging the tree like emotional support, pretending I was anywhere else in the world but back there. I remember it can’t have been long, but it felt like a long time.”
Afterwards, he acted as if nothing had happened and took Ms Taylor to a McDonald’s for a milkshake before forcing her to engage in a sex act in a children’s playground.
“I’m angry at what he’s done to me. I’m angry about who he was. He was a police officer, and we go to them to be protected, and I wasn’t protected,” she said.
All the offences were committed while Provan was a serving officer in the Metropolitan Police’s East Area Command Unit.
The court heard he was obsessed with young women, had viewed teenage pornography, and had collected more than 700 female contacts on his mobile phone.
Assistant Commissioner Louisa Rolfe, from the Metropolitan Police, said the force was “looking” at possibly contacting some of the young women whose details were found on Provan’s mobile phone.
She said she was “ashamed and saddened” after the judge accused the Metropolitan Police of looking out for its own.
She said the force would examine whether it had missed opportunities, adding: “It’s quite clear from what we’ve seen already that we have let the victims down and that must never happen again.”
Provan’s first trial for double rape ended in a hung jury, but he was convicted in 2018 and jailed for nine years.
He served three years and three months in prison, only to be released on bail after the Court of Appeal ordered a retrial.
At the fresh trial, Ms Taylor gave evidence for a third time and six more charges of rape, relating to Provan’s earlier attacks on the female officer, were added.
Boasts of being ‘trained killer’
In June, Provan, now 44 and from Newmarket, in Suffolk, was found guilty of a total of eight rapes against the two women.
The second victim, who has not waived her lifelong right to anonymity, told the court that Provan regarded himself as “untouchable” and bragged about being a “trained killer”.
Judge Lucas told the defendant: “What struck me about Ms Taylor’s description of your behaviour towards her was the same cold-blooded and chilling entitlement to sex, and sex in your preferred manner followed immediately by conduct as if everything was perfectly normal. You exhibited this same behaviour with [the female officer].”
Referring to the officer’s earlier complaint about Provan, the judge added: “I find it highly troubling that [her] colleagues in the Metropolitan Police in 2004-05 were more concerned about looking out for ‘one of their own’ than in taking her seriously and investigating her complaints about you.
“Had they done so, it may be that Ms Taylor would have been spared the ordeal she has had to go through.”
The judge also found Provan to be a dangerous offender and said he struggled to see why he would have the details of 751 females on his phone other than his “fascination bordering on obsession with young women”.
