Police officers’ failure to catch Wayne Couzens for flashing women before he murdered Sarah Everard made him feel “invincible”, a judge has said.
Mrs Justice May handed the former Metropolitan Police officer a new 19-month sentence for three incidents of indecent exposure in the months leading up to the kidnapping.
Delivering her sentence at the Old Bailey, the judge said Couzens “could easily have been traced” after McDonald’s staff gave police his car registration and credit card details on 28 February 2021.
“Nothing was done at the time and Sarah Everard was taken three days later,” Mrs Justice May said.
“The fact that no police came to find him or his black car, to question him about these incidents, can only have served to confirm and strengthen in the defendant's mind a dangerous belief in his invincibility, in his power sexually to dominate and abuse women without being stopped.”
Couzens admitted two incidents of indecent exposure at the McDonald’s, as well as a previous incident in Kent in November 2020, while three other alleged incidents were left to lie on file by the prosecution.
Delivering an emotional statement to the sentencing hearing on Monday, one of his victims said: “If he had been held accountable when we had reported the crime, we could have saved Sarah.”
She said that after McDonald’s staff reported Couzens to the police three days before the kidnapping, she was not contacted or asked for a statement.
A female cyclist who was targeted by Couzens months before said that when she reported his crime to police, it was not “taken as seriously as I felt that it should have been”.
“The horror of what happened will remain with me for the rest of my life,” the woman added.
Another victim, who also worked at the McDonald’s, described feeling sick after seeing he had murdered Ms Everard and felt “survivor’s guilt”, adding: “It could have been me.”
