Most true-crime dramas end happily, with the perpetrator found guilty of whatever heinous crime they’ve committed, and locked up in prison for the rest of their lives. But not Believe Me. ITV’s excellent series detailing the crimes of “black-cab rapist” John Worboys went further, moving the story on to how the victims brought a human rights case against the police – who failed to investigate their attacker – and won.
“Having the story end with him behind bars isn’t reality,” says Aimee-Ffion Edwards, who plays Sarah, a pseudonym for one of Worboys’ victims (under UK law, victims of sexual crimes have an automatic right to anonymity). “He goes to prison, but these women have to continue living their lives with this thing that has happened to them. For them, it never ends. It has such a huge ripple effect on their lives – on them, their families and the people around them, the way they see the world.”
Serial sex offender Worboys is currently serving two life sentences in prison for attacks on 12 women between 2000 and 2008. As the driver of a black cab, he would target women on their own, offer them champagne laced with sedatives and assault them in the back of his taxi. Over the 13 years he drove his cab around London, police estimate he could have raped or sexually assaulted more than 100 women.
Edwards as Sarah – a pseudonym for one of Worboys’ victims (Photo: ITV/Simon Ridgway)In the final episode of Believe Me, we watched as Sarah and her fellow survivor Laila (also a pseudonym, played by Aasiya Shah) took on the police officers who didn’t believe that they had been raped. Sarah was told her calm stoicism made her seem like she wasn’t a victim (she later revealed that a police officer had advised her not to get emotional); Laila’s character was brought into question simply because she dared to wear red nail polish.
“People’s perception or ideas of what anybody’s response should be to any sort of trauma is so frustrating,” says Edwards. “The onus is still on women to keep ourselves safe. Some of that is what society tells us, but some of it is instinct: we all know about holding our keys a certain way, but no one teaches it to you. A woman should be allowed to walk home at night through a park… or get into a cab.”
The details that emerged from the court proceedings in which Sarah and Laila successfully sued the Met Police under the Human Rights Act were astonishing. It was found that because the police were looking for a certain date rape drug in Laila’s urine, they ignored traces of the drug that Worboys used to incapacitate her, and that officers were actively discouraged from investigating sexual offences in favour of crimes that were more likely to be solved. The police told victims they searched Worboys’ home and that no evidence had been found – in fact, they had done no such thing.
“A lot of people have asked me if I was shocked by the script and I don’t know if I was,” says Edwards. “I was angry. A lot of women would not be that shocked or surprised, which is so depressing. Believe Me highlights so many systemic institutional failures and issues but doesn’t spend loads of energy pointing fingers at certain people. It’s the institutions that need to be exposed and held accountable.”
Sarah gets told her calm stoicism made her seem like she wasn’t a victim (Photo: ITV/Simon Ridgway)There’s a powerful, heartbreaking scene in episode three in which Sarah walks into a room full of women, each of them a victim of Worboys. “If they’d only believed her,” says Edwards, “none of these women would be sat there. You can know that you’re not to blame, but you still hold the burden.”
“Sarah” and “Laila” eventually won their battle against the Met Police, whose appeals were all quashed by the Supreme Court. On that day in 2018, the real Sarah addressed the police directly: “Had you done your job properly, there wouldn’t be 105 victims, there would be one. I can take the one. I can’t take the 105.”
But that wasn’t the end of the story. In the drama, we watched as Sarah, Laila and another of Worboys’s victims, Carrie Symonds (yes, Boris Johnson’s wife, who has waived her right to anonymity), found out that their attacker was due to be released on parole after serving only 10 years of his indefinite sentence. And they weren’t told of the parole board’s decision by official means – they found out through the press. “You just can’t believe that there is yet another blow to these women,” says Edwards. “They’ve been let down again.”
Once again the women fought the law, and the decision to release Worboys was overturned. “They were so brave, so selfless,” says Edwards. “What they fought for, it’s not just for them, it’s for other women that didn’t come forward. It’s so easy to become complacent with these things but we need to continue that conversation, to make sure that we are constantly improving and safeguarding.”
Daniel Mays as John Worboys, who is due another parole hearing this summer (Photo: ITV/Simon Ridgway)And still the story is not finished. Worboys is set for another parole hearing this summer, making Believe Me all the more timely. “There will be lots of people who remember the story from the papers, but that can just be the sensational side of it,” says Edwards. “Having a drama like this puts the focus back on to the human core. These are normal women whose whole lives have been changed because they got into the back of this cab. It could have been anybody.”
On set, there were intimacy co-ordinators and stunt co-ordinators to walk the actors through the sexual assault scenes (though none of the attacks were shown on screen, mimicking just how little the victims remembered). Most useful, however, was the input of the real victims, who provided writer Jeff Pope and the actors playing them with invaluable insight. “I was really lucky to speak to the real Sarah,” says Edwards. “She was incredibly open and generous with how she talked about it. The best advice comes from the person you’re playing.
“I can only imagine what a huge thing it is to have someone portray something so private about yourself. You want to do the best that you can to make sure that they’re happy with what we make and how their story is told.”
Having set out such a horrific story, does Edwards feel that Believe Me gives Sarah, Laila, Symonds and other survivors of Worboys a happy ending? “It does. It celebrates and highlights their bravery and stamina. Survival looks like all sorts of different things. Sometimes it’s just getting up in the morning… and sometimes it is suing the Met Police.”
‘Believe Me‘ is streaming on ITVX
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