A former officer with London’s Metropolitan Police was on Tuesday (22) jailed for 16 years for a series of rapes, in the latest scandal to hit the force.
Adam Provan, 44, was found guilty in June of raping a 16-year-old girl in 2010 and six counts of rape against a fellow police officer.
Sentencing him at London’s Wood Green Crown Court, judge Noel Lucas highlighted the “persistence and seriousness” of Provan’s crimes, and said he had displayed a “cold-blooded entitlement to sex”.
That Provan was “someone members of the public have an entitlement to feel was someone of the highest trustworthiness” was particularly “troubling”, he added.
The Met — the largest police force in the country — has been under pressure from a string of scandals, including the high-profile kidnap, rape and murder of London woman Sarah Everard by serving officer Wayne Couzens.
Since then another officer, David Carrick, has also been jailed for life for dozens of rapes and sexual assaults stretching back two decades.
The Met revealed in January that 1,071 of its own officers had been or were under investigation for domestic abuse and violence against women and girls.
Provan’s crimes were finally uncovered in 2016 when a woman told police he had raped her on a blind date when she was 16, six years earlier.
He was also found guilty of raping a fellow officer between 2003 and 2005.
Another colleague said that he repeatedly sent her “nuisance” messages, but nothing was done about it.
The crimes were committed while Provan was a serving officer in the Met’s East Area Command Unit.
He was first convicted of raping the teenager in 2018 and jailed for nine years, but only served three years after the Court of Appeal ordered a retrial.
At the new trial, six more charges of rape, relating to Provan’s attacks on the female officer, were added to the original accusations.
He was found guilty in June of a total of eight rapes against the two women.
In a victim impact statement, the first accuser said: “No amount of justice will make me forget the date from hell.
“Even though I tried my best to block it out I will never forget how scared I was when the assault took place and 13 years later reliving my worst nightmare.”
The second victim told the court Provan believed he was “untouchable”.
Judge Lucas said the treatment she received from the Metropolitan Police was “abysmal” and “shocking.”
(AFP)
