Will Mellor's tears for rape victim as he slams police for failing to vet bad apples

Powerful emotions are triggered for Will Mellor when he talks about his latest role presenting the second series of the documentary series Cops Gone Bad.

Particularly chilling for him is the episode focusing on Adam Provan, a serving Metropolitan Police officer who raped a 16-year-old girl after lying to her father about his age.

Aged 31 at the time of the 2010 attack, Provan pretended to be 22 to get permission from Lauren Taylor’s dad to take her to the cinema.

But instead of seeing a film, the monster drove her to a country park and raped her in a woodland while she froze to the spot.

After casually throwing his used condom to the floor and pulling up his clothes, Provan guided a shocked Lauren - who has bravely waived her right to anonymity and features in the Crime+Investigation documentary - out of the woods as though nothing had happened.

Driving them to a nearby McDonald’s, he instructed her over milkshakes to lie to her parents about where they’d been, even checking the film times and looking up the plots, so she could appear convincing.

Then, later that evening, Provan drove her to a children’s playground and raped her again - forcing her to perform a sex act on him near the play equipment.

When she finally got home, she said nothing to her dad, fearing he would blame himself for letting the police officer take her out - staying silent about her ordeal for six traumatising years.

“That episode landed harder because I could see my own 16-year-old daughter in that girl,” Will, 48, says ahead of the February 17 launch of the series. “When Lauren’s telling her story, she’s found the courage to come forward and speak.

“But what really hit me is her dad had said Provan was safe for her to go out with. When she said, ‘I didn't say anything to my dad because I didn't want him to blame himself’, that cut me in half and choked me up. I went home and hugged my daughter that night.

“All you want to do as a parent is protect your kids,” says Will, who has two children - daughter Renee and son Jayden, 20 - with his wife Michelle Mcsween-Mellor.

“I would blame myself. I don't know how I'd cope with that. And I said in the programme, I'd want to kill him. It’s a visceral reaction, but it’s a human one.”

With Cops Gone Bad, Will hopes to shine a light on how the ‘bad apples’ of police forces were able to prey on their innocent victims for years before getting caught.

But it’s not about cop-bashing, he insists.

“The public’s trust has been eroded since Wayne Couzens [the Met Police officer who raped and murdered Sarah Everard in March 2021 and is now serving a whole-life term]. David Carrick, who we covered in the first season, was in the same unit as Couzens - he had two decades of raping women,” he says.

“Then in this series we have Cliff Mitchell, who joined the Met even after he was accused of rape. I just think if there’s any doubt, even one per cent, don’t let them in [to the police]. Because once they’re in, their power is too strong.”

The authorities, says Will, need to be far more transparent about the changes they’re making to vetting processes in order to rebuild that precious trust.

“You think they would have learned something from the Wayne Couzens case that we cannot let another one slip through the net,” he says. “I know it's impossible to say we can't let another one in, but what changes did you make? The public needs to know, because no one knows. And that's why this programme keeps the fire burning to keep asking them questions.”

Injustice is something that burns inside Will, too. It’s what has led him to roles like sub-postmaster Lee Castleton in the award-winning 2024 ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office - a far cry from his Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps stint as Gaz that brought him to fame in 2001.

For years Will has been grieving his 44-year-old sister Joanne, who died in 2012 of heart failure.

Born with complex disabilities, Joanne always looked up to her younger brother, and the whole family jumped at the chance for her to have a paid residential trip away with carers. While she was there, one of the carers failed to give her all the heart medication she needed, says Will.

“He told her she was a liar and didn’t talk to her very nicely. And even though it was all written in black and white on the box, instead of giving her five a day, they gave her one a day,” claims Will. “And she came back and said, ‘am I going to die?’ My mum went mad and we got hold of the company and she died a few weeks later of a heart attack.” But because of her heart condition, the family will never know whether the incorrect medication dose played a part, he explains.

An inquest found Joanne had died of natural causes, and while the company that provided the holiday admitted a “mistake was made”, Will still feels the pain of unanswered questions. Wiping away tears as he recalls what happened, he says, with deep regret: “I couldn’t protect her. And my dad felt the same and it broke him. It broke all of us.”

Joanne’s death sent the Broadchurch and Line of Duty star into depression, which he coped with by turning to drink and gambling.

“I didn’t want to get out of bed,” he says. “The gambling wasn't really an addiction, it was just looking for a high - same as the drinking. When my dad died in 2020, I realised I can’t do that.”

Bill Mellor died of cancer during the Covid lockdown and Will will always regret not hugging him one last time when they sat two metres apart in Bill’s garden.

Devoted to his family, Will continues: “That’s all I’m about. My family is my world. I never want to not be there. And I never want to look back and say, ‘I should have known that, I should have been there.’”

Will picks his work carefully to ensure he can always take the summer off to spend time with his wife and children.

“My career has been amazing, but it comes secondary to them,” he says. “If it ended tomorrow, I’d be like, ‘Can you believe it lasted this long?!’

“I’m just a kid from a council estate in Stockport who had a dream!’ I’d love working-class kids to see me and know they can follow their dreams, too. They told me I’d be nothing at school because I have dyslexia, but I never stopped believing.”

*Cops Gone Bad returns for series 2 on February 17, available to stream on Crime + Investigation Play.

Cases from Cops Gone Bad:

Adam Provan

Former Met Police officer Provan was jailed for 16 years in 2023 for multiple rapes against Lauren Taylor, who was 16 at the time, and a female colleague between 2003 and 2005. He will face another eight years on licence after his release.

During the trial, the judge slammed the Met’s handling of the female officer’s complaints against Provan, saying the force were "more concerned with looking after one of their own than taking her seriously", adding that had an investigation been brought, Lauren may never have been raped by Provan.

Lewis Edwards

Prolific paedophile Edwards posed as a teenage boy to incite girls to send him explicit videos and images of himself while serving with the South Wales police. More than 200 girls fell victim to the predator - the youngest was just 10 - and the images he blackmailed them into sending him were distributed on the dark web.

It was only thanks to the painstaking detective work of his colleagues that Edwards was caught, although even before his trial he still refused to hand over his passwords and phone codes. He is now serving life with a minimum term of 12 years.