Met did not warn woman of upskirting abuse before death

The Metropolitan Police failed to safeguard a vulnerable woman prior to her death despite receiving serious abuse allegations involving her husband, a former high-ranking officer, an inquest has revealed.

Rebekah Arter, 47, died in a hotel room in Barbados last year while on holiday with Warren Arter, who previously led a rape investigation team.

The assistant coroner at South London Coroner’s Court delivered an open verdict on the medical cause of Rebekah’s death but said there was no doubt she was suffering from coercive control.

The Metropolitan Police blamed an error with a software programme in flagging a report from a different woman about Mr Arter received three months before Rebekah’s death.

She complained of grooming and voyeurism, and said he had sent her unsolicited upskirting images of an unknown woman while she was asleep.

The woman in the images was later confirmed to be Mrs Arter, but she was not warned about this abuse prior to her death, nor was her family.

Mrs Arter, a hairdressing tutor from Welling, first met Mr Arter when he was the officer in charge of investigating a complaint she had made to the Met of domestic abuse.

They later married – but her family said they were never made aware of wider allegations of abuse against him.

In 2023, the BBC reported that Mr Arter – then unnamed – had been investigated in 2017 by the Met’s internal Department for Professional Standards after four women reported that he had sex with them after meeting him as a victim of sexual offences handled by his ‘Sapphire’ unit.

The women were known to be vulnerable – some had addiction histories – and the investigation was taken so seriously that two officers travelled to Australia to interview one of them.

The force referred the matter to the police complaints watchdog, the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), who began an independent investigation.

Despite Mr Arter being arrested and suspended, and the IOPC finding a case to answer, he was not charged nor dismissed from the force for six years, and only then over drug offences.

The inquest heard Mrs Arter’s hairdressing colleagues observed bruising consistent with domestic abuse on three occasions when she attended work.

Her family also described coercive behaviour – including requiring Mrs Arter to dress in a revealing way and taking drugs under his influence – and believed compromising photographs of her were used as a means of manipulation.

On 28 June 2024, Mr Arter rang Mrs Arter’s relatives to tell her she had died on a hastily arranged holiday in Barbados.

Photographs show her body surrounded by drugs and blood. The family told the inquest Mr Arter gave conflicting accounts of what happened.

One relative said he told her that Mrs Arter had choked but others said they were told he had woken up to find her dead. He told multiple relatives he thought the blood in the bed was chocolate.

The assistant coroner, Prof Harris, said the medical cause of death was unascertained and could not exclude unlawful killing, accident or a natural death.

Prof Harris cited the failure to take toxicology tests by Bajan authorities – who gave a cause of death of aspiration pneumonitis – as a key reason for this.

A UK forensic pathologist told the inquest this could not be determined and criticised the treatment of her body which involved her organs inexplicably being dissected prior to repatriation.

This raised the prospect of deliberate concealment or obstruction to further investigation according to the assistant coroner, Prof Andrew Harris, who said he intended to notify the Foreign Office of this conduct.

He said Mr Arter’s evidence about his wife’s death was inconsistent and unreliable – but he did not accept any discrepancies as fact.

Mr Arter was charged on his return to the UK from Barbados over misconduct allegations relating to the unnamed woman’s account. He was found dead in his cell in Wandsworth Prison 10 days later.

• You can reach Noel directly and securely through encrypted messaging app Signal on: 07809 334720, by email at noel.titheradge@bbc.co.uk or on SecureDrop

Following the Casey Review – a damning report which criticised the force’s failure to protect the public from officers who abuse women – the Met’s Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley unveiled a new plan in 2023.

He promised to “put more people and focus into the teams protecting women and children from violence” and “go after predatory men who commit those crimes”.

Elliot Usher, Mrs Arter’s son, blamed the Met’s failure to report the March 2024 allegations about Mr Arter to his mother or the family for her death.

The assistant coroner said he rejected that submission but said at that very least Mr Arter would have been arrested without the Met’s delay and subject to bail conditions barring him from contacting his wife.

When Metropolitan Police officers finally spoke to the anonymous woman about her allegations Mrs Arter was identified as the woman asleep in upskirting images Mr Arter had shared.

The inquest heard the upskirting images also showed Mr Arter performing a sex act on himself.

The force said the delay in officers acting on the anonymous woman’s report was caused by a problem with a software programme called CONNECT.

DCI Kelleher told the inquest the issue has not been remedied and a solution is only planned to be installed in April 2026.

In a statement, the Met’s Cdr Simon Messinger said its thoughts and sympathies were with Mrs Arter’s family following the conclusion of the inquest.

The force said the coroner had recognised there was no evidence the Met knew of a real and immediate risk to Mrs Arter’s life and it had dismissed Mr Arter for drug offences in 2023.

It added he was due to face another misconduct hearing into his conduct and behaviour towards women and revealed this now involved eight women – and included Mrs Arter herself.

Cdr Messinger said: “While the matters against Mr Arter were unproven, we continue in our drive to tackle police-perpetrated abuse, recognising the very significant impact it has on victims, and to rid the Met of those who are not fit to serve by pursing conduct and criminal investigations as appropriate”.

The Met declined to provide responses to the BBC’s questions about the investigation into Mr Arter when contacted in 2021.