Responding to the news that serial rapist Stephen Mitchell was released in September 2017 from prison by the Parole Board after serving just 7.5 years of a double life sentence, Centre for Women’s Justice expressed grave concern regarding the Parole Board decision and echo Yvette Cooper’s call for an urgent review.
The recent successful challenge of the Parole Board decision to release John Worboys, has established that there is need for transparency and due diligence to be executed when assessing risk in cases such as these. It is both disappointing and incomprehensible, that a man convicted of such serious crimes against especially vulnerable women, particularly when in a position of trust as Stephen Mitchell was at the time as a Police Officer, has been deemed to be no longer a threat and subsequently released so soon into his sentence.
Harriet Wistrich, Director of CWJ and the solicitor who represented DSD and NBV, the two victims of Worboys who successfully challenged the Parole Board decision to release him made in December 2017, said
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There appear to be some striking parallels between this case and the decision by the Parole Board to release John Worboys. He is a serious sexual offender who deliberately targeted many vulnerable women calculating that they would not be believed, he serious abused a position of trust and he was given a relatively short minimum term prison sentence despite the life terms making him eligible for release by the parole board at this early stage. I note the Parole Board made the decision to release Mitchell three months before the Worboys’ decision and therefore any lessons that may have been learnt subsequently would not have applied then. Questions need to be asked again about the approach taken by psychologists and the parole board in relation to calculating and manipulative serial sexual offenders and what sort of training and understanding there is of the particular issues faced by female victims in the criminal justice system”