John Worboys has been refused parole for a second time, with the Parole Board declining to direct his release or recommend a move to open conditions after a hearing held behind closed doors.
For Carrie Johnson, the decision brought an anxious wait to an end. Posting on X, she said it had been a hugely anxious wait knowing that Worboys was up for parole again, and that the relief she felt knowing he would remain behind bars was hard to put into words. She added that women and girls across Britain are safer as a result of the decision.
Johnson, now known by her married name and the wife of former prime minister Boris Johnson, was one of more than 100 women believed to have been targeted by the man widely described as the black cab rapist. In 2007, when she was 19, she was waiting for a night bus after going out with friends on the King’s Road in Chelsea when a black cab driver offered to take her home to East Sheen for £5. He told her he had just won big at the casino and invited her to raise a glass of champagne to celebrate. She poured it onto the floor because she feared it might be spiked, but later said the driver persuaded her to drink a shot of vodka.
Her mum later said she could barely walk when she arrived home. Johnson later read about Worboys, who was accused of drugging female passengers with spiked champagne and attacking them, and in 2018 she waived her anonymity as a victim. About 10 years after the 2007 incident, she played a crucial role in the successful campaign to overturn the Parole Board’s earlier decision to release Worboys from jail. That made this week’s ruling more than a routine parole decision: it was a fresh judgment on whether a man whose case has long stood for how victims were dismissed should be allowed any further freedom.
The story of those women has also been brought to television in Believe Me, the Bafta-winning ITV drama from screenwriter Jeff Pope, which traces how Worboys’s victims struggled to be taken seriously by the police. Pope has said of Johnson’s journey: “I think her story is: watch out what you do to the girl, because the woman will come back and haunt you,” a line that fits the arc of this case as much as any legal summary. For Johnson, the answer to the question that has shadowed the case for years is now clear: Worboys stays in prison.
