The man found guilty for the shocking rape that saw Andrew Malkinson wrongfully convicted has been sentenced. Paul Quinn avoided justice for the attack for 23 years, 17 of which Malkinson spent behind bars in high security prisons and on the sex offenders register. Quinn, 52, has been sentenced to a 24-year custodial sentence for rape and other offences.
The Judge said the earliest Quinn could be released from prison is after 14 years before being released on license. The two counts of rape account for 21 years of the total sentence. Mr Justice Bright recognised this was ‘above the normal guideline range’, but considered this ‘unavoidable’ given the ‘extreme and unusual circumstances’ of the case.
The victim of the rape, which took place in Little Hulton in 2000, was in court for the sentencing. Now in her 50s, a statement was read to the court of her behalf in which she said she lives with ‘permanent anxiety’ after the attack. She added ‘every day I look at my face and see the disfigurement, the scarring. It is a permanent reminder of that night and what I experienced. I have to live with that’.
Bright spoke to the court of the circumstances of Quinn knowing another man went down for the crime he had committed. He said it would be wrong to compare the ‘indirect evil’ Quinn did to Malkinson to that inflicted upon the ‘heroic woman’, but added that he does consider both acts to be ‘evil’.
Paul Quinn was not investigated for the crime during the initial investigation, despite being a known sex offender and living in the local area. He was finally identified as a possible suspect after Malkinson went to enormous lengths to clear his name. DNA evidence from the initial investigation which matched Quinn finally exonerated Malkinson, but only after repeated attempts to have the case reinvestigated by the Criminal Cases Review Commission. Their rejections and delays to identify and re-test this evidence led to Malkinson serving ten years longer in prison than he should have.
Quinn walked free following the attack, with the eventual investigation into him uncovering that he started to take an interest in Malkinson’s conviction before it was even publicly known to be a miscarriage of justice. His interest in the case continued when it started to make headlines in 2023. Police found he made several internet searches into how long DNA evidence is kept by police, even reading coverage of the case on this site.
Following Quinn’s conviction this April, Malkinson said: ‘I am content that the right result has finally been achieved for the victim, myself and the public. But the truth is that if the police had acted as they should have done, Paul Quinn could have been caught a long time ago. Instead, they wanted a quick conviction and I was a handy patsy forced to spend over 17 years in prison for his horrific crime. All those responsible for allowing this dangerous man to wander free whilst I was locked up must now be held to account.’
Detective Chief Superintendent Rebecca McKendrick, senior investigating officer on the case, said in a statement today: ‘When Paul Quinn attacked and raped a lone woman late that night in July 2003, he knew what he had done. He knew his crime was horrific and he knew how cowardly he was for watching another man go to prison… We know this outcome has come two decades too late for those impacted by this case. However, we will not allow time to be a barrier to justice for anyone who has further information about Paul Quinn and any further potential sexual offending. To commit such a violent attack raises concerns that there may be other victims out there.’
The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) is investigating five former police officers on suspicion of gross misconduct, including one who is being ivnestigated for possible criminality in relation to the case. A sixth serving officer is being investigated on suspicion of misconduct. The watchdog is also investigating Greater Manchester Police’s destruction of evidence in the Malkinson case, as well as its conduct in relation to two key witnesses with undisclosed criminal histories whose eyewitness testimony proved crucial during the initial trial. The IOPC is set to examine whether they were given incentives to testify against an innocent man.
