When the BBC aired its Panorama undercover investigation in October 2025, the fallout was immediate and overwhelming. More than 300 people reached out, detailing stories of racism, corruption, and bullying by police—many of them women who said reporting rape or domestic abuse to officers "was like being raped again." The investigation, which focused on Charing Cross Police Station in London but drew responses from across England, laid bare a culture that many say remains toxic, misogynistic, and resistant to meaningful change.
This wasn’t just another exposé. Panorama’s secret filming, conducted over seven months, captured officers at one of the capital’s busiest stations making racist and misogynistic remarks, reveling in the use of force, and openly mocking victims. The footage included a now-infamous moment where Sergeant Joe McIlvenny dismissed a pregnant woman's rape allegation, telling a colleague, "That’s what she says." According to BBC reporting, such callousness was not an outlier but emblematic of a wider problem.
For many viewers and victims, the revelations were all too familiar. The BBC spoke with women from both rural counties and big cities who described mistreatment by police when they sought help. Joanna, for instance, recounted how an officer told her to "grow a pair" after she reported being punched in the face by her partner. "I was devastated and the police made it 10 times worse," she told BBC News. "My face had a bruise from the punch and one of the officers looked at me as if I was exaggerating the whole thing. He told me to grow a pair... followed by a chuckle. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. It took so much to go there in the first place and then I wished I hadn’t."
Another woman, Ava, was pregnant when she fled her abusive partner who, she said, had repeatedly raped and hit her. The police response left her shattered. "It was like being raped all over again," she told the BBC. "What they put me through was worse than what I was going through before." She described how evidence that could have supported her case was "wilfully ignored," and officers told her that without CCTV footage, "it is just your word against his." Ava, who is Black, believes her race made matters worse: "The colour of my skin meant everything was stacked against me. The language they used and how dismissive and mocking they were, was both misogynist and racist."
These aren’t isolated stories. Claire shared how, after escaping a 12-year abusive relationship, police failed to act when her former partner breached court orders and entered her home. "They just stood laughing and chatting with him," she told the BBC. Forced to seek shelter elsewhere with her children, Claire said, "I felt even more afraid and more isolated after speaking to the police. It’s a boys’ club—a network across police stations, police forces and county lines. I would never call the police and I still worry he’ll find me and show up."
The BBC’s investigation comes against a backdrop of repeated scandals for the Metropolitan Police. The Casey Review, published in 2023 after the murder of Sarah Everard by serving officer Wayne Couzens, branded the Met "institutionally racist, misogynist and homophobic" and called for sweeping reforms. Yet, as recent undercover footage and the flood of victim testimonies make clear, progress has been painfully slow.
Crime+Investigation’s series Cops Gone Bad with Will Mellor has highlighted similar stories, documenting cases where officers like David Carrick, Adrian Trevor Moore, and Adam Provan abused their positions to commit serious crimes. "The message hasn’t got out there," Mellor said, reflecting on the persistence of misconduct. "You’d think they would realise, 'We cannot let one more person slip through this net' and then straight away, Mitchell slipped through. He may have seen Wayne Couzens on the news and thought he had a chance to get away with being a rapist. That sickens me."
For many victims, the damage is lasting. One woman told the BBC that after being raped as a teenager, the police made her feel like she was part of the problem. "I have never had a night without a nightmare as a result. I’ve buried a lot of what the police officers asked me. They spoke down to me—like I was part of the problem," she said. Watching Panorama decades later, she realized, "I must be one of thousands, I’m not the only one. They made me feel I was."
In response to the latest revelations, the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) said it was "working hard to build a culture based on integrity and trust" and improving vetting and misconduct procedures. Deputy Assistant Commissioner Helen Millichap, the NPCC’s lead for violence against women and girls, told the BBC that police chiefs are working with survivors to reform training, with "a key focus on first responders’ understanding of the dynamics of abuse and their empathy with victims." She emphasized the need for officers to feel "confident in calling out misogyny and sexism within policing," and said that improved vetting was "having an impact in identifying and dismissing those who should not be in policing."
Policing Minister Sarah Jones condemned the "sickening comments" exposed by the investigation, urging people to report such behavior and highlighting that police chiefs now have new powers to dismiss officers who commit gross misconduct. "We will root out those unfit to serve the public," she told the BBC.
Some reforms are already underway. The Domestic Abuse Matters training program, developed in 2016 by the College of Policing, is now used by 37 of 44 police forces in England and Wales to improve how officers handle sexual and domestic violence cases. Still, as the BBC and Crime+Investigation have reported, cultural change is lagging behind policy. The force’s response to the Panorama broadcast included suspending eight officers and referring itself to the Independent Office for Police Conduct. Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley, while refusing to resign, promised further reforms but acknowledged that the problem is systemic and "runs deeper than a few 'bad apples'."
The stakes could hardly be higher. As each new scandal emerges, public trust in the Metropolitan Police—and British policing more broadly—continues to erode. For many, the question is no longer just how to root out individual offenders, but how to dismantle the systems that enable abuse, silence whistleblowers, and leave victims feeling abandoned by those sworn to protect them. Until those questions are answered and acted upon, the thin blue line will remain under intense and justified scrutiny.
