We want to extend a huge thank you to all our supporters who enabled us to bring a successful challenge.  

We are keeping this page open for the next two weeks in case either of the Defendants or John Radford/Worboys applies for permission to appeal the decision.  If they do not, we will close this page.

The Parole Board decision to release John #Worboys has been quashed, and rule 25 of Parole Board rules is unlawful!

Your support made this possible - and not only will the decision to release be reviewed but the secrecy surrrounding Parole Board decisions will be a thing of the past. You helped change the law. 

We will provide a more detailed update later but for now this is an incredibly important decision and it's down to the extrordinary tenacity of DSD, NBV and exceptional advocacy of Harriet Wistrich, Phillippa Kaufmann QC and the rest of the legal team. 

Read a summary of the judgement from Phillippa Kaufmann QC at Matrix Chambers here: https://www.matrixlaw.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/DSD-explanatory-note-in-the-Worboys-case-27.3.18.pdf

Read the full judgement here: www.judiciary.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/dsd-nbv-v-parole-board-and-ors.pdf 

More later today...

On 7 February 2018, the divisional court granted permission for the two claimants DSD and NBV to proceed with their judicial review of the parole board decision to release the serial sex attacker John Worboys.  Their lawyers have now been granted access to the parole board dossier and having now examined the contents, they have drafted new grounds in support of the challenge that the decision by the parole board was irrational.  They are also arguing that the parole board rules which prevent the publication of any reasons for a decision are contrary to the principle of open justice. The defendant in relation to the open justice challenge is the Secretary of State for Justice who is responsible for the rules. DSD and NBV have been joined in their legal challenge by the Mayor of London and in addition New Group are joined in the challenge only on the open justice grounds.  John Worboys, who has changed his name to John Radford, is an ‘interested person’ in the legal case and will be separately represented. 

Some of you may have read about the landmark Supreme Court case judgment last week in a linked case that started back in 2011 by the same two claimants, DSD and NBV. http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-43140827.  The case recognised that the two claimants were badly failed by the police when they originally reported the attacks on them by Worboys in 2003 and 2007.  As a consequence of those failures, when a subsequent investigation commenced leading to the eventual conviction of Worboys, at least 105 women who had reported attacks on them were linked with Worboys.. The Supreme Court has dismissed the police appeal and upheld the decisions of the lower courts to make clear that where there are ‘significant and egregious’ failures by the police of serious crimes of violence, the police have a duty under the Human Rights Act to conduct an effective investigation.

Since the parole board decision to release Worboys received publicity on January 4 of this year, several more women who had not previously reported Worboys have now come forward to report their allegations to the police.  What every victim of Worboys has said is that the nature of his deception and planning was such that they do not believe he can have suddenly transformed such that he no longer represents a danger to women.

Please continue to support DSD and NBV in bringing this judicial review challenge on behalf of all the victims of Worboys and women in general. Funds are needed to ensure that they are at no risk of adverse costs if they lose and to pay their legal team.

You can help by doing two quick things: 

1) Sharing the link to the CrowdJustice page on FaceBook

2) Emailing 10 of your friends and telling them about how important this case it

Thanks to your amazing support, we have won the very first stage of the Judicial review challenge by achieving a stay on the release of Worboys until an urgent half-day hearing that will be listed between 6 to 8 February.  

That hearing will determine whether we are granted permission to proceed with the full judicial review challenge and if so will give directions for the disclosure of the parole board dossier.  

Please continue to share the case page on social media and via email to your friends.

On Friday night Newsnight featured a brilliant interview with DSD, one of the two women bringing the judicial review – see here https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b09pwc6r/newsnight-26012018 .

You may have heard that the Mayor of London is also bringing a challenge, which we welcome – but that doesn’t mean we could withdraw because the perspective of the victims of Worboys – particularly the two women who have already had to challenge police failings – is particularly important. Furthermore, we are also challenging the Parole Board Rules which prevent any publication of the reasoning of the parole board, which in any event will help us better understand how such a seemingly wrong decision can have been made.

Thanks so much for your continued support. 

So many thanks again from everyone involved in this case but particularly from DSD and NBV. 

Your incredible support has enabled us to issue a judicial review in the High Court. You can see the details below in the full press release. 

Please continue to support the case by sharing the case page on social media, emailing your friends and letting people know they can have a real-world impact on this issue that matters to so many people. 

As we've said before - if for some reason our JR is unsuccessful we will be using the funds to prosecute other cases in support of women who have been victims of violence, sexual assault and rape. 

In particular, we have been contacted by a number of Worboys' victims and we will be presenting a dossier of cases to the police and Crown Prosecution Service requesting they investigate further and prosecute. 

Press Release: 

On 25 January solicitors on behalf of two women who were raped and sexually assaulted by John Worboys issued a claim for judicial review against the Parole Board and the Secretary of State for Justice (SSJ) challenging the decision to release John Worboys (now known as John Radford) from prison.  The application includes a request for urgent consideration seeking a stay of the release of Worboys pending the outcome of the proceedings. 

The two Claimants are known as ‘DSD’ and ‘NBV’ from previous proceedings against the Metropolitan police arising from their failures to investigate their original reports of attacks by Worboys.  The Claim incorporates two grounds.  The first ground directed at both the SSJ and Parole Board argues that Rule 25 of the Parole Board rules which prohibits the publication of any reasons for a Parole Board decision is ‘ultra vires’ and therefore unlawful as it imposes a blanket ban on disclosure of reasons and thereby abrogates the fundamental principle of open justice.  The second ground argues that the Parole Board decision is irrational on the basis of all known facts including: the long history of cold calculated attacks on a large number of women; Worboys’ failure to acknowledge his guilt until, if at all, very recently; and the fact he has remained throughout his sentence in a high security prison without testing in open conditions, the Board having decided he was unsafe to transfer as recently as two years prior to the Parole Board decision to release him.

The two Claimants who were not informed of the decision to release Worboys nor consulted on licence conditions are convinced that Worboys remains a danger to women.  Their view is shared by many victims who have come forward recently, as well as the public at large.  The Claimants, who would much rather put this case behind them, consider they must do all they can to reduce the risk to other women and seek public accountability.  To ensure that they are not at any financial risk by bringing this claim a Crowd Justice campaign has been launched and an appeal for ongoing support is being made. Although other parties may also be launching challenges the perspective of victims is paramount in a case of this nature https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/challenge-worboys-release/. 

Harriet Wistrich, solicitor for the Claimants has been contacted by a number of other victims of Worboys and she will be presenting a dossier of cases to the police and the Crown Prosecution Service  requesting they investigate further and prosecute.  The dossier includes two previously unreported cases from 2002 and 2003 and two cases that were investigated by the police that would pass the evidential threshold but have not been prosecuted.

First of all, an enormous thank you. We couldn't have made this progress without you. 

The two women bringing this claim have been greatly heartened by the generosity. Thousands of people coming together to support their challenge is spurring them to fight on for justice.  

Please take a moment to read and share the Sunday Times account by another one of Waorboys' victims as to why this challenge is so important: 

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/im-terrified-worboys-will-come-after-me-please-dont-set-him-free-8f5vm6krv

We are going to continue raising and have increased our goal to £100k to ensure that there is no cost risks to the two women bringing the claim. 

They could be made liable if they lose the case to pay the costs of (1) the Parole Board (2) the Ministry of Justice (who we may be challenging directly about the Parole Board Rules) and (3) John Worboys. We shall be seeking an interim relief that Worboys should not be released until after there has been a consideration of our application for judicial review, we may therefore need to provide an undertaking to pay damages to him if we lose for the loss of liberty.  

In addition we would like to raise sufficient funds to ensure that we can pay an expert legal team to work on the challenge on behalf of the two claimants.

As we say on the page, in the event that we raise more money than is required, the funds will be used to pay for similar legal challenges on behalf of victims of rape.

Thanks to an incredible amount of support we have reached our first target of £10k in a matter of hours. We could never have hit this milestone without hundreds of people coming together to show that violence against women must be taken seriously and we have to improve accountability to ensure that victims are adequately protected.

But we need to make sure DSD and NBV, the brave victims raising their head above the parapet to bring this challenge, are protected from paying the costs of the Parole Board and other interested parties including Worboys himself. They won't be able to bring the challenge without this financial support.

Please help us getting to £50k by donating and sharing the link to this page.

Thank you so much for your support.