Sarah Everard: Wayne Couzens sentenced to whole life in prison
Met Police officer Wayne Couzens has been sentenced to a whole life order after admitting to the kidnap, rape and murder of Sarah Everard.
Couzens was a serving police officer with the Metropolitan Police when he kidnapped the 33-year-old marketing executive.
At the sentencing at the Old Bailey on Thursday afternoon, Lord Justice Fulford said Couzens had shown “no evidence of genuine contrition.”
Everard disappeared as she walked home in Clapham, south London, on March 3, during the country’s third lockdown.
Her body was found a week later in woodland in Kent.
Video footage released on Wednesday showed Couzens displaying his warrant card before restraining Everard, putting her in a hire car and driving away to Kent.
Lord Justice Fulford said there was “no doubt Couzens used his position as a police officer to coerce her into his car.”
The judge said the 33-year-old was “a wholly blameless victim of a grotesque series of circumstances that culminated in her death”.
He described Everard as an “intelligent, resourceful, talented and much loved young woman”.
The murder led to protests over violence against women and institutional problems within the police force.
The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) is looking at whether the Met failed to investigate two allegations of indecent exposure relating to Couzens, just days before the murder.
“You have irretrievably damaged the lives of Sarah Everard’s family and friends,” Lord Justice Fulford told the killer.
“You have eroded the confidence that the public are entitled to have in the police forces of England and Wales.
“It is critical that every subject in this country can trust police officers when they encounter them and submit to their authority, which they are entitled to believe is being exercised in good faith.”
Met Commissioner Cressida Dick was urged to resign by Mother of House of Commons Harriet Harman.
“Sarah Everard was simply walking home. Women must be able to trust the police not fear them. Women’s confidence in police will have been shattered,” the Labour MP tweeted.
Jamie Klingler, who co-founded the Reclaim These Streets campaign group, also called on the Met Commissioner to step down.
She said: “We are all brokenhearted and scared and no-one cares enough to make it a fundamental priority.”
“It’s not a bad apple. This man did this and he was one of yours and now they are trying to spin and say he was a former police officer, he was a serving police officer who used a warrant card to arrest her.”