Met Police officers 'shared revenge porn' and dismissed 99% of rape cases as 'regretful sex', female ex-cop says
21 March 2023, 00:01 | Updated: 21 March 2023, 00:11
A former Met Police officer said her colleagues shared "revenge porn" with each other and claimed most rape cases were just "regretful sex".
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Alice Vinten, who served in the Met for 11 years, said her fellow officers shared around images that had been sent by their girlfriends in private.
She also said her male colleagues would randomly show her pornography and made jokes about her giving oral sex while she was eating a banana, in a career plagued by sexism.
Ms Vinten said: "I remember them taking the mick out of one of the younger officers because he had got an STI from a prostitute. There was even stories of them using prostitutes in this country.
"There were things that would now be considered revenge porn. A number of the police officers had seen intimate pictures and they would share them around."
Ms Vinten said she overheard police officers say 99% of rape cases were regretful sex, and "women would cheat and say it was rape to get out of it".
She added: "We were always told never to apologise, never admit to doing anything wrong - that kind of attitude really does not help.
"If you root out the people who make these comments you root out the really bad ones."
It comes as a damning review into the culture and standards of the Metropolitan Police has said it needs a wholesale reform of leadership, and called the force institutionally racist, misogynistic and homophobic.
The Metropolitan Police has failed to protect the public from officers who abuse women, organisational changes have put women and children at greater risk and female officers and staff routinely experience sexism, Baroness Louise Casey's report said.
Baroness Louise Casey stopped short of calling for the UK’s largest police force to be split into smaller ones, after numerous high-profile cases of officers abusing their power.
But she did not rule out the possibility that the Met could be harbouring more criminal officers like killer Wayne Couzens and serial rapist David Carrick.
The review, which was commissioned after the abduction, rape and murder of Sarah Everard in March 2021, has found evidence of discrimination being “baked into the system”.
Baroness Casey has warned the force’s leadership would have to “wake up” and bring about “fundamental change” in light of her findings.
Without that, her report says, “more radical, structural options, such as dividing up the Met into national, specialist and London responsibilities, should be considered to ensure the service to Londoners is prioritised”.
"Female officers and staff routinely face sexism and misogyny," the report said. "The Met has not protected its female employees or members of the public from police perpetrators of domestic abuse, nor those who abuse their position for sexual purposes.
"Despite the Met saying violence against women and girls is a priority, it has been treated differently from 'serious violence'.
"In practice this has meant it has not been taken as seriously in terms of resourcing and prioritisation."
Police commissioner Sir Mark Rowley has vowed to tackle the problems facing the force.
