Police issue dating app warning in wake of Stephen Port conviction

The National Police Chiefs’ Council has demanded that dating apps such as Grindr take “more responsibility” for protecting users’ safety. The plea comes after 41-year-old Stephen Port was found guilty yesterday of murdering four young men he met through online dating apps with lethal doses of the drug GHB.

The bodies of Anthony Walgate, 23, Gabriel Kovari, 22, Daniel Whitworth, 21, and Jack Taylor, 25, were all found in and around a churchyard in barking, east London between June 2014 and September 2015, less than 500 metres from Port’s home. The victims all established contact with their killer on online dating sites including Grindr and FitLads.

Speaking on the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire programme, Staffordshire Chief Constable and police lead for LGBT issues Jane Sawyers said that while apps have helped in “signposting people to the police,” they “could do more to prevent the offences in the first place”.

She suggests that apps display safety messages such as “Get to know the person, not the profile,” or warning against fake profiles.

Admitting that many app users feel a sense of “stigma” in reporting crimes, Sawyers said: “There shouldn’t be any concerns about gay people reporting things to police. We’re not there to judge, what we’re interested in is justice for the individual.”

Investigations into Stephen Port’s murders have been widely criticised, with LGBT rights campaigner Peter Tatchell accusing the Met Police of failing to link the deaths sooner because of the victims’ sexual identities.

“If four young middle class women had been murdered in Mayfair, I believe the police would have made a public appeal much sooner and mounted a far more comprehensive investigation, the veteran LGBT campaigner said in a statement yesterday.

“The killing of low income gay men in working class Barking was treated very differently. Police officers stand accused of class, gender and sexuality bias.”

In the wake of the investigation’s failings, Scotland Yard have revealed that 17 of its officers are the subject of an Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) investigation into the handling of the case.

Meanwhile LGBT victim support charity Galop have seen “a dramatic rise” in the number of sexual offences reported to them involving assaults during ‘hook-up’ situations.

A spokeswoman for the charity, Mel Stray, said: “Of the over 100 cases we’ve seen in the last few years where clients have come to Galop and reported sexual assault in a chemsex or hook-up context, not one person has been charged or sent to court.”

She also called for “better whistle-blowing facilities for people to report fake profiles, [so] those profiles do get taken down.”

In This Article: