Met Police pays Tina Duggan after 30-year fight over Sutton abuse failures

The Metropolitan Police has paid compensation to a woman who says officers failed to investigate her reports of abuse for more than three decades. Tina Duggan, now 55, was drugged and raped by Frederick Allchorne from the age of 15 at a shared house in Sutton. Allchorne was jailed for 22 years in 2023 after admitting multiple offences against her.

Duggan told the BBC she was held at a property in Sutton for six years after meeting Allchorne in 1984. She described being drugged repeatedly, leaving her unconscious and unable to recall events. At 17, she was taken to St Helier Hospital in Carshalton after nearly swallowing her tongue, an incident she attributes to the drugs. Hospital staff asked what she had taken, but she said she did not understand the question.

Reports to police ignored

In 1991, Duggan escaped to a women’s refuge with her two children and reported Allchorne at Sutton police station. She said officers told her there was not enough evidence, despite her account, hospital records and indecent photographs. The case was closed within two weeks. The Crown Prosecution Service later contacted her in 2009 for a character statement about Allchorne, who was then convicted of sexually assaulting three children. The Met still declined to reopen her case.

Duggan said she did not disclose the abuse again until 2018, when she was hospitalised after a severe panic attack. She told the BBC she felt her reports were not taken seriously. "What more evidence could you want? I felt like they just couldn’t be bothered," she said.

Settlement without liability

The Met settled a civil claim with Duggan on 19 March, providing compensation without admitting liability. Iftikhar Manzoor of Hudgell Solicitors, who represented her, said the claim was brought under negligence and Article 3 of the Human Rights Act 1998, which prohibits inhuman or degrading treatment. He said the settlement was about accountability as well as financial redress.

A review by the Met’s Directorate of Professional Standards examined three reports Duggan made between 1991 and 2018. It found no misconduct by the officers involved. A Met spokesperson said the force had since changed its approach to investigating rape and sexual offences. Arrests and charges for rape in London have more than doubled in the past year, the spokesperson added.

What happens next

Duggan said she hopes her story will encourage others to come forward. "The perpetrator got punished for what he did, for all the years that he damaged me. So it’s never, ever too late," she told the BBC. The Met said it had met Duggan and acknowledged that more should have been done to protect her. The force did not disclose the amount of compensation paid.