Lawyers working for the Met police told a detective who had been raped by a colleague that she could not have severe trauma because she was only attacked once.

DC Linda Williams sued her employer in 2022 for failing to protect her against serial rapist PC David Carrick, who attacked her while they were working together in south London in 2004.

But Williams, 60, who waived her right to anonymity to share her story with the BBC, says dealing with the Met reduced her tears and was even more traumatising than the rape itself.

The lawyers were officially representing Met police commissioner Mark Rowley, so Williams – who is still a serving officer – is calling for his resignation.

“As far as I am concerned, it is Mark Rowley, the commissioner, saying these terrible things, as he was the defendant in the case,” she said. Rowley has failed in his promise to fix a toxic culture within the force, she added.

The start of her civil case against the Met was “when the suicidal thoughts really came in,” she said, adding that force did not “believe anything” she said and that its behaviour felt “like being raped all over again”.

Williams kept silent about the rape for years because she felt Carrick would not be punished by the Met and that she would then be stigmatised for reporting him.

She reported Carrick to Hertfordshire Police in 2021 after seeing media coverage that the force had charged him with the rape of another woman. Carrick received 37 life sentences in 2023 after being convicted of sexual offences against Williams and 11 other women.

During four years of legal wrangling, Met lawyers gave several reasons to question the severity of the trauma she was suffering, including the fact she was “only attacked once”, Williams said. “I don’t know how many times you have to be raped to have severe PTSD.”

A document the Met sent to Williams said the fact the “abuse itself was isolated to a single episode” would be a key factor in determining the damages she received. It also argued that for years after the rape, the trauma she went through was “not such as to significantly impact her on a day-to-day basis”.

The Met has now paid Williams an undisclosed sum in compensation without acceptance of liability.

A Met spokesperson said the force “tried to reduce further distress and re-traumatisation to DC Williams’ welfare and has aimed to deal with her claims as quickly and compassionately as possible”.

Williams, who was a rape investigations officer in the early 2000s, said that if she was attacked again she would not report her case to the Met because she has no “faith” in them to handle it correctly.

Rowley, who has been commissioner since 2022, publicly apologised to Carrick’s victims in 2023.

Two months later, the Met was described as institutionally misogynistic in a report by Baroness Casey, who said the force was a “boys’ club”.

Sexual assault allegations against officers and staff of the Met have tripled in the five years since Sarah Everard was raped and murdered by serving officer Wayne Couzens.

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