Andrew Malkinson believes an inquiry into how he was wrongfully convicted of rape must be made statutory to ensure Greater Manchester police do not hide evidence.
Malkinson, 57, was convicted of raping a stranger in 2003 in Greater Manchester, despite no DNA evidence. The court of appeal overturned his conviction in July after forensic testing linked another man to the crime.
Malkinson said he thought the lord chancellor, Alex Chalk, had “made a mistake” by not compelling witnesses by law to testify and disclose documents. The inquiry’s chair is expected to be declared imminently, but Malkinson first wants to see evidence that it will have legal “teeth”.
“The police don’t want to disclose,” Malkinson said. “They never have done and I can’t see them playing ball unless they’re compelled to by a statutory inquiry.”
Malkinson said his legal team had to “drag all the information out” of GMP needed to help overturn his conviction. It took the threat of two judicial reviews before GMP released information about the destruction of evidence and the undisclosed criminal convictions of key witnesses that helped win his appeal.
Now he wants more answers. “I want to know all the details of exactly how and why [this] happened. Because I can’t rest until I know. It’s my life and the suffering is incalculable. Oceans of tears I’ve suffered because of that. And I want to know why.”
Malkinson spent the summer living on his former partner’s houseboat in Holland before going on a road trip through France and Portugal to Seville in a friend’s van.
This was the freedom he dreamed of while spending 17 years in prison for a rape he didn’t commit, but now he has it, it is also a painful reminder of what he lost. “That sense of freedom was stolen from me for 20 years and very nearly for the rest of my life. I’ll never forgive them for that.”
His home is now a compact grey and orange tent, his one concession to luxury an inflatable airbed. He is subsisting on very little, knowing it is likely to be two years before he sees any compensation because he is planning a civil claim.
“You need financial freedom to be truly free, don’t you? And I don’t have that,” he said, speaking to the Guardian in the London offices of his lawyers at the justice charity Appeal.
“It’s a tough time because there’s so much uncertainty. I’m living in a tent, I’m living on benefits. I want some resolution.”
Until the various inquiries into the case, as well as any civil claim, are concluded he feels he cannot move on. “I’m reliving this experience constantly. I can’t draw a line under anything and it’s very stressful … I’m pretty much in limbo at the moment. Nothing is resolved.”
The toll on him is obvious. He keeps losing his thread in conversation and his hands shake. “It’s definitely affecting my mental health,” he said. “I’m struggling.”
He always loved travelling, “never had a lot of love for England” and now finds it helpful to keep his mind off things. He is only briefly in London to meet lawyers before heading back on the road.
Ultimately he wants to settle in Holland, where he had been a long-term resident before his arrest while on a visit to the UK. But Brexit means that after three months in mainland Europe he now has to spend another three outside it and hopes to take his tent to Turkey next.
There is no way of solving his visa issue within the rules, but he is appealing to the Dutch authorities to grant him residency on compassionate grounds. “I was resident there for a full 10 years, and I was just visiting England when [the police] pounced on me.”
When he finally gets a payout he plans to take his mother away too. She stood by him in prison and is also reeling from the unravelling of his conviction. “She’s under a lot of stress as well of course,” he said. “She cries a lot.”
GMP have been contacted for comment. A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “The Lord Chancellor has been clear Andrew Malkinson suffered an atrocious miscarriage of justice and he deserves thorough and honest answers as to how and why it took so long to uncover.
“The Criminal Cases Review Commission, Crown Prosecution Service and Greater Manchester Police have all pledged their full cooperation to the independent inquiry into the handling of his conviction and subsequent appeals.”
