Kirk Reid

Kirk Reid (born 1964 or 1965) is an English convicted rapist and serial sex offender. In 2009, Reid was convicted of two rapes, 26 sexual assaults and possession of indecent images of children. Reid has three brothers, some of whom are half-siblings; one of them was a Metropolitan Police constable at the time of Reid's arrest. The woman was 17 years old, and did not report the rape to police at the time. Reid has not been charged with her rape. Another woman accused Reid of raping her in Balham in 1995. She reported the rape after his arrest in 2008, and Reid admitted having sex with her, but claimed it was consensual. That same year, Reid was accused and acquitted of indecent assault after a woman claimed he attacked her in an alley.

One of Reid's victims was attacked and sexually assaulted by him in September 2001, after she had got off the night bus in Tooting. The judge recommended that Reid serve at least seven-and-a-half years before being considered for release.

In January 2018, more than a year after Reid's recommended non-parole period had elapsed, the Parole Board announced that his case had come up for review "following the standard six-month process for all indeterminate sentence prisoners". In September 2018, Reid's request for release was denied, and the board ruled that he could request release again in 2020.

Subsequent developments

Reid's uninterrupted crime spree, like that of another prolific serial rapist, the black cab driver John Worboys, was largely blamed on the failure of the police to successfully investigate sexual assaults, and led to procedural changes in the London Metropolitan Police's handling of rape and sexual assault crimes. John Yates, an assistant police commissioner at the time, stated that "Nothing can adequately excuse the failure to follow up straightforward lines of inquiry that should have seen Reid arrested" in 2004—four years before his actual arrest. Three senior officers were subject to misconduct hearings for the errors made in the investigations, including not taking Reid's DNA sample when he became a police suspect.