A former police officer who served in London’s Metropolitan Police (Met) has been jailed for 16 years for raping a woman and a teenage girl, the latest in a series of cases that have shaken public confidence in the capital’s police force.

Adam Provan, 44, was jailed for 16 years for multiple rapes over eight years involving a 16-year-old girl and a police officer’s wife.

“I’m sure the public will be as shocked and disgusted by Provan’s crimes as we are here,” said Louisa Rolfe, deputy commissioner of the Met, as the Metropolitan Police is informally known.

“He abused his position as a police officer to gain the trust of both of these women. His actions are completely despicable,” he added.

All the offenses were committed while Provan was an active police officer.

Rolfe stressed that the Metropolitan Police had carried out an investigation into his time in the force to “fully understand whether we could have acted sooner to bring him before the courts or stopped him from joining the police”.

Britain’s biggest police force is under pressure to make internal reforms and address widespread public concern about the behavior of its officers.

This year, an independent inspection report said the Met was institutionally racist and homophobic and unable to police its own service. The review was ordered in 2021 by then-Met chief Cressida Dick, after a serving police officer was jailed for life for the rape and murder of Sarah Everard, in a case that shocked the country and – along with subsequent crimes against of women – drew attention to the wider workings of this force.

The public outcry following this case brought to light many other examples of criminal and inappropriate behavior within the ranks of the Corps.