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The Independent UK
The Independent UK
National
Pat Hurst

Sex offender convicted of rape after innocent man’s wrongful imprisonment

A sex offender has been convicted of a brutal rape for which another man spent 17 years in jail after a notorious miscarriage of justice.

Paul Quinn, 52, was found guilty by a jury of the sex attack on a young mother as she walked home in Little Hulton, Salford, in the early hours of the morning on July 19, 2003.

Andrew Malkinson, working as a security guard at a local shopping centre, protested his innocence but was wrongly picked out at an identity parade and jailed.

Father-of-six Quinn, a sex offender from the age of 12, was arrested almost two decades later after advances in DNA testing meant in 2022 a billion-to-one match of his DNA profile was made with saliva left on the victim’s vest top.

By then, Mr Malkinson, from Grimsby, North East Lincolnshire, had made multiple failed appeals.

Andrew Malkinson at the Royal Courts of Justice in London (PA)

Now aged 60, he was only released in 2020 after 17 years in jail, with his conviction finally quashed by the Court of Appeal in 2023.

Following a six-week trial at Manchester Crown Court, Quinn was convicted on Friday of two counts of rape.

He was also convicted of causing grievous bodily harm and attempting to choke or strangle his victim to render her unconscious while he carried out the attack.

Fallout from the case continues, with a public inquiry now underway after a 2024 review found failings that could have exonerated Mr Malkinson a decade before he was eventually released from prison.

And five former Greater Manchester Police officers and one currently serving with the force are under investigation by the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) with both the chair and chief executive of the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) having resigned.

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