Eleanor Neale

But when the time came for Wayne Cousins' sentencing,

He was handed the most severe punishment possible in the UK, a whole life order.

He will be spending the rest of his working life in prison and he will die behind bars.

He's also serving concurrent shorter terms for two cases of indecent exposure, including the McDonald's incident.

And even though he did actually try to appeal against his whole life order, I don't know if he was trying to say that it's not fair to keep him in prison for the rest of his life.

Regardless, in July, 2022, his appeal was dismissed.

Of course, in the aftermath of this case, the whole UK was shaken with the absolute shattering of trust in our law enforcement, not only based on the fact that a serving police officer had used his position in order to kidnap and murder a woman, but also because there were so many chances to prevent this, so many chances that were missed.

The amount of times Wayne Cousins managed to pass police vetting, despite being in major debt, despite having several reports of indecent exposure against him, despite literally being identified as a suspect in one of them.

Police had his name, they had his car registration plate, but they failed to look into that incident quick enough.

So Cousins was able to keep his job, to keep his warrant card, to keep his handcuffs, and he was able to use them to murder Sarah Everard.

The Met Police did try to defend themselves on all of this, saying that there was actually nothing in Wayne's background at the time that he was hired and the time that he was vetted that was cause for concern for them.

And I actually think that just makes them look even worse.

Like, that's not a defence.

Sure, Wayne Cousins didn't have any convictions, but are several reports and accusations not enough to cause concern?

We're still gonna let that man become a police officer.

Even in the aftermath of this case, more women came forward with allegations and reports of previous encounters with Wayne Cousins.

They had seen his face on the news related to this case and they had finally recognised that he was their attacker as well.

So many more indecent exposure incidents were reported and even an attempted kidnapping at knife point from 1995.

One woman had been carrying that with her for decades and finally she had a name to pin to her traumatic memory.

I do need to clarify that Wayne Cousins has never been charged or convicted of anything in relation to that allegation.