(ANSA) - LONDON, FEBRUARY 07 - Former British police officer David Carrick, 48, was sentenced to 36 life sentences in front of Southwark Crown Court in London, having pleaded guilty in recent months to 49 charges relating to 24 episodes of rape against 12 women, as well as sexual assault and harassment.
Crimes perpetrated with impunity during almost twenty years of service despite repeated reports of suspicious behavior;
and whose unveiling has lengthened the list of historical or recent scandals that have emerged on the London Metropolitan Police (or Scotland Yard), the main police force in the United Kingdom, as well as a national counter-terrorism coordination center.
During the reading of the life sentence - which provides for a 30-year term for early release, without however excluding the legal benefits that make it usable on paper - Judge Cheema-Grubb evoked details of the accused's brutal violence, highlighting them" total contempt" for the victims rather than for the uniform.
Not without branding Carrick as a man capable of turning into a "monster" if in the grip of alcohol;
as well as unable to show credible signs of repentance in the process.
The man, informed the judge herself, is however currently being held in a psychiatric hospital, after a suicide attempt (revealed by Cheema-Grubb in the operative part as an act of "self-pity, not remorse") in the maximum security prison of Belmarsh.
(HANDLE).