Serial sex offender is jailed for 24 years for 2003 rape after innocent Andrew Malkinson was wrongly locked up for nearly two decades
A serial sex offender who strangled a woman unconscious and raped her has finally been jailed after an innocent suspect was imprisoned for 17 years.
In one of Britain’s worst ever miscarriages of justice, Andrew Malkinson was wrongly convicted of raping the young mother on the side of a motorway in 2003.
The attacker was actually Paul Quinn, a hard-drinking, divorced father of six who claimed that as a young man he had consensual sex with hundreds of women.
The fence erector (52) was found guilty of rape, strangulation and grievous bodily harm at the hearing held in April.
Sentencing him to 24 years at Manchester Crown Court, Judge Mr Justice Bright said the victim was a ‘hero’ and going to the courts twice must have been ‘unbearable’ for him.
He stated that Quinn had viewed a 2004 online news article about the first case, which showed he was aware of the harm he had caused to the woman and Mr Malkinson.
‘None of this seems to have bothered you at any point over the past 20-plus years,’ he said.
‘It is clear that you knew that another man had been arrested, charged, convicted and imprisoned. ‘You knew his conviction was unjust.’
Quinn’s sentence includes 21 years in prison and a three-year extended license for dangerousness.
But he will be eligible for parole in 14 years, which is less time than Mr Malkinson has already served.
The innocent man, now 60, said in a statement: ‘I am insulted that this violent, immoral individual, who was content to allow me to be slandered for twenty years for his crime, received a lighter sentence than the one given to me.
Quinn (photo taken during police interviews) told detectives he had no way of remembering the hundreds of women he claimed to have slept with; but he told the court that the rape victim was not one of them.
‘I didn’t know if I would be released or not.
‘Paul Quinn has a history of violence and sexual offending and allowed me to rot while he enjoyed his freedom.
‘I hope this man serves longer than me. Anything less is not justice.’
The victim, who was in his 30s at the time of the attack and was permanently disfigured, told how he ‘lived in fear that someone would be behind me’.
The rape occurred in the early hours of Saturday, July 19, 2003, as she walked home in Salford, Greater Manchester.
At the first trial he told the jury he heard ‘footsteps’ and then, to his horror, ‘felt this force from behind’.
In tears, she told how she desperately tried to fight off the attacker who was strangling her.
From left to right: A photo of Andrew Malkinson taken in custody following his arrest in 2003, a created e-fit image of the attacker based on the victim’s description, and an image of Paul Quinn taken in 2005
New DNA analysis taken from the victim’s clothing in 2023 yielded a one-in-a-billion match with the sample Quinn gave a decade earlier.
Before losing consciousness, he scratched his face with such force that it caused one of his nails to break.
Her cheekbone was broken, her eyes were swollen, and one of her nipples was partially severed from the bite.
In a victim impact statement read out in court today, she said: ‘As a result of this case, someone was robbed for 17 years.
‘As for me, the impact of what happened will stay with me for life. Every day I look at my face and see the scar. It is a permanent reminder of that night.
New DNA analysis taken from the victim’s clothing in 2023 yielded a one-in-a-billion match with the sample Quinn gave a decade earlier.
But the hearing left police and prosecutors facing questions about why doubts about Mr Malkinson’s conviction were not acted on sooner.
Andrew Malkinson’s conviction overturned in 2023 after years of protesting his innocence
Rapist Paul Quinn spent 23 years enjoying his freedom, becoming a grandfather, leaving his wife, moving to Devon and starting a new relationship.
Following the conviction, it was revealed that Quinn had previously committed an indecent assault when he was 12 years old.
Four years later, at the age of 16, Quinn was convicted of two counts of unlawful sexual intercourse with a 12-year-old girl.
Later, aged 19, he was convicted of arson and sentenced to two years in prison after setting fire to a wheelie bin outside his ex-girlfriend’s home while her two children were inside.
Other convictions in the 1990s included causing actual bodily harm, burglary and trespassing with a loaded air gun.
Jurors were not told that Quinn’s DNA was sampled in 2012 as part of a national police operation targeting convicted sex offenders.
A series of errors meant it would not be matched with samples taken from the rape victim for another decade.
While Mr Malkinson endured a nightmarish prison sentence, Quinn became a grandfather, separated from his wife, moved to Devon and began a new relationship.
Mr Malkinson’s Hickman and Rose lawyer, Toby Wilton, said today’s sentence was ‘not the end of this matter’.
He is currently campaigning for an overhaul of the Government’s scheme to compensate victims of abuses of justice.
‘“Currently, the costs incurred in trying to obtain fair and appropriate compensation are deducted from the final amount some victims receive,” Mr Wilton explained.
‘This essentially means that victims are expected to pay for the privilege of getting justice.’
The investigation, led by an independent judge, will now examine why it took so long to unmask the real attacker.
Detectives suspect Quinn, a “very dangerous man” who was “probably waiting to see a woman alone”, may also be responsible for other unsolved sex crimes that occurred during his years in Salford.
They have today asked anyone who has any information or believes they may have been a victim to come forward.
