LONDON: A rapist who escaped justice in the United Kingdom for more than 20 years while an innocent man served a life sentence for the crime was finally jailed on Friday.

“You sat back and enjoyed your liberty at the expense of an innocent man,” judge Robert Bright told Paul Quinn, 52, as he jailed him for 21 years for a 2003 rape and strangulation of a young mother as she walked home in the early hours.

Andrew Malkinson, 60, who always protested his innocence, spent 17 years in prison after being wrongly convicted in 2004.

He was released from prison in 2020 after DNA testing showed he could not have been the perpetrator and a court of appeal formally overturned his conviction in 2023.

Quinn was sentenced after being found guilty following a six-week trial in Manchester, north-western England.

Malkinson slammed the Paul Quinn’s sentence compared with the life sentence he had received.

“I am insulted that this violent, depraved individual -- who was content to let me suffer two decades of vilification... has received a softer sentence than was imposed on me, an innocent man,” he said.

Left to rot

“Paul Quinn, who has a track record of violence and sexual offences, and who let me rot whilst he enjoyed his freedom, could now be out after just 14 years, and will certainly be out after 21 years,” he said.

People convicted of sexual offences can in certain circumstances be released on parole after serving two-thirds of their jail term.

The victim was beaten, bitten, choked unconscious and raped after being snatched from the street in northwestern Little Hulton on July 19, 2003.

The judge praised her “heroic” determination to give evidence for a second time over the prolonged attack in which he said she could have died.

Published in Dawn, June 6th, 2026