Former Conservative Party aide Carrie Symonds was targeted by the serial sex predator John Worboys, it has been revealed.
Symonds, 30, has written an account of her ordeal at the hands of the convicted rapist, who operated from his black taxi, for The Sunday Times. The paper first published the article anonymously in January, but Symonds has now given permission for her real name to be used.
“I was one of nearly 100 girls who came forward to the police having read that report. It is not an easy thing to go to the police and admit that you may have been drugged and assaulted. And yet still 100 women came forward,” Symonds wrote.
“I am genuinely terrified that he is going to come after me. He knows where so many of his victims live. Why should we think he won’t?”
Symonds was just 19-years-old when Worboys, a taxi driver who targeted late-night passengers, spotted her waiting for a night bus in London in 2007.
He pulled over, stating that he did not like to see young women on their own, and offered her a lift, lying that he lived in the same area as her.
Worboys drugged Symonds, who writes that she does not know what happened as a result: “I feel I would know if Worboys had raped me that night. I’d have flashbacks or there would have been horrendous tell-tale signs when I woke the next day. But I will never truly know for sure what happened after he drugged me.”
Symonds’ role in keeping the black-cab rapist behind bars, and the way that some Tory ministers treated her as a result, was one reason behind the decision to quit her role as the Conservative parties’ communications director this summer.
She was criticised for lobbying ministers to overturn a Parole Board decision to release Worboys.
Symonds has recently been linked to former foreign secretary Boris Johnson after it was announced he and his wife will divorce. Since then, Symonds has been portrayed as a “scarlet woman” by parts of the media.
This prompted Westminster women, including the sports minister, Tracey Crouch, and the MPs Anna Soubry and Stella Creasy, to launch a petition in complaint against the “misogynist” treatment faced by Symonds.
Education Journalist Anna Fazackerley, who reportedly had an affair with the former Foreign Secretary 12 years ago, also defended Symonds in a Guardian article published on Friday.
“Like Symonds and all the other women who wish they weren’t starring in this pathetic media circus, I am far more than the hollow, blonde honeypot caricature that has been assigned to me,” she wrote.
“I have never dignified the many stories about me with any response at all. But 12 years on I feel enough is enough. If women like me don’t speak out, misogyny wins.
″’I don’t know Carrie Symonds. But rather than hiding out hoping no one will notice me, I stand beside her.”
Symonds is due to chair a discussion at an upcoming Tory conference about the ‘abuse’ that deters women from pursuing careers within politics.