(Image credit: ITV)<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
In the show, Sarah and Laila join forces with solicitor Harriet Wistrich (Philippa Dunne) and barrister Phillippa Kaufmann QC (Rachael Stirling) to sue the Metropolitan Police under the Human Rights Act for their failures relating to the investigation.<\/p>\n
The women say also being subjected to degrading treatment after reporting their attacks, which ultimately didn’t result in any action being taken, contributed to their distress.<\/p>\n
They win their case, but Jeff was very keen to incorporate the looming element of degradation into the storyline. “We take the audience along the journey with these women as they go through reporting being assaulted, hours of interviews, intimate examinations, more interviews, samples are taken, intimate swabs,” he says.<\/p>\n
The writer adds, “These women just went through the most horrendous process, all ultimately to be told, we don’t believe crime has happened. Essentially, we don’t believe you.”<\/p>\n
Of course, it doesn’t need to be said that misogyny plays a huge role in the poor rates of conviction for sexual assault. The creative team behind the show spoke to the real Sarah and Laila as part of their research, and the perception of women is something that was glaringly obvious when they relayed their experience.<\/p>\n
Interviewed by police, the women would be placed “in situations where they were one on one, where some of the questions they asked were ridiculous,” Jeff says, adding, “Laila’s characters is asked, ‘Would you consider yourself the type of person who wears red nail varnish?'”<\/p>\n
“Which was… What on earth? As the real Laila said, ‘What on earth has that got to do with anything? My nail varnish?'”<\/p>\n
Eventually, Sarah, Laila, Harriet and Phillippa were joined by Carrie Symonds (Miriam Petche), who was targeted by Worboys when she was younger and narrowly escaped, who come together when it look like Worboys will be released after eight only years behind bars.<\/p>\n
The ladies push for an unprecedented judicial review of the Parole Board\u2019s decision, and their campaign is successful, and Worboys\u2019 parole quashed. Their bravery results in significant and much-needed changes to the law.<\/p>\n
Aim\u00e9e-Ffion Edwards also shares her experience of meeting with the real Sarah to prepare for the role, and what a humbling time it was to spend time together.<\/p>\n
“She was so open and generous, and she’s absolutely amazing – I asked her who she was before this happened, because that is so important” she says.<\/p>\n
The actress adds, “You need to show how much this has changed people’s lives. It’s huge, and it changes people’s lives in a very quick, dramatic way – their inability to now get on a tube, or to interact with people. It’s a privilege to speak to her.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.womanandhome.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The following content contains references to sexual violence some readers might find upsetting. The title of ITV’s latest true crime drama, Believe Me, succinctly informs viewers about what fails to happen both in the four-part series, and also in an overwhelming amount of sexual violence cases – women are not believed. Airing from May 10, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2409796,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2409795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/\u2018Im-not-interested-in-getting-inside-the-mind-of-psychopaths-ITVs.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2409795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2409795"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2409795\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2409797,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2409795\/revisions\/2409797"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2409796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2409795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2409795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2409795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}