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A “savage” rapist who evaded justice for nearly two decades could spend less time in prison than the innocent man who was wrongly convicted of his crime.
Paul Quinn, 52, was ordered to serve a minimum of 14 years in prison on Friday over a 2003 rape for which Andrew Malkinson wrongly spent 17 years behind bars.
The judge, Mr Justice Bright, said it was a “minor miracle” that the woman survived the act of “direct physical evil” as she walked home in Salford in the early hours of 19 July 2003.
He said Quinn would serve a maximum of 21 years in prison but would be eligible for parole after 14, three years short of the term served by Malkinson, whose conviction was quashed by the court of appeal.
Malkinson, 60, said he was “insulted and appalled” that Quinn had “got off so lightly”. He added: “I hope that this man does not get parole and that he serves longer than me. Anything less is not justice.”
Outside Manchester crown court, sources close to the Quinn investigation suggested the sentence could be referred to the attorney general’s office for being too lenient.
Quinn, a father of six, was found guilty in April after a fresh analysis found traces of his DNA on the victim’s clothing.
He followed the woman for about a mile before dragging her into a secluded woodland where he strangled her unconscious then raped her twice.
The victim, now in her late 50s, sat at the back of the courtroom and wiped away tears as her attacker was sentenced.
Quinn must spend at least 14 years in prison before he is eligible to apply to the Parole Board for release. His release would depend on an assessment of whether he continued to pose a risk and whether he had taken responsibility for his crime, which he continues to deny.
In a statement read to the court, the victim said the ordeal “has stayed with me and will remain with me for life”.
“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,” she said.
The woman, who cannot be identified, said that 23 years after the attack she lived with “permanent anxiety” and “in constant fear that someone is behind me, even in places that others wouldn’t consider a risk, like the supermarket”.
She added: “For him, it was one night of his life. For me it was one night that changed my life.”
Quinn was not investigated at the time of the rape despite being a convicted sex offender who lived near the scene.
Instead, detectives focused on Malkinson, who was jailed in 2004 and spent 17 years in prison protesting his innocence.
His conviction was quashed in 2023, becoming one of the most notorious miscarriages of justice in modern British history.
Quinn is being investigated as a potential suspect in other serious sexual assaults, including three rapes. The case is now being examined by a judge-led inquiry and by the police watchdog.
The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) is investigating five former Greater Manchester police officers on suspicion of gross misconduct, including one who is under criminal investigation. A sixth officer, still serving in the force, is being investigated on suspicion of misconduct.
The IOPC is examining Greater Manchester police’s destruction of evidence in the Malkinson case, its failure to disclose the criminal histories of two key witnesses in the 2004 trial, and whether those witnesses were offered incentives to testify against the innocent man.
Sentencing Quinn, Bright said the attacker had abducted the woman from a safe place and “savagely” attacked her in “the most grave” way.
The woman, who had been walking home from her boyfriend’s house in the early hours of the morning, was strangled until she passed out before being raped and punched with such force that her cheekbone was fractured. Her nipple was partially severed from a bite.
Bright said the woman was “very lucky she did not die and luckier still that she did not incur significant brain damage”, adding: “It’s a minor miracle that she didn’t die.”
Prosecutors had asked the judge to impose a life sentence but the judge declined, saying he was satisfied that Quinn had changed his lifestyle since 2017, when he left Salford after a drugs dispute, although he still presented “a significant risk of serious harm – not indefinitely, but for a period of some years”.
Earlier, Bright had appeared to suggest that Quinn posed less of a risk because he would be in his 60s before he was eligible for release. He said people who committed “random acts of violence … could do that up until their dying breath” but that with rape “there comes a time in life where that is less of a danger”.
Police and prosecutors knew as long ago as 2007 that an unidentified man’s DNA was found on the woman but decided not to carry out further tests at the time. Quinn’s DNA was eventually identified on samples of her clothing in October 2022 after a fresh forensic review.
Quinn, who lived in the Little Hulton area of Salford before divorcing his wife and moving to Exeter in 2017, was convicted of twice raping a 12-year-old girl in 1990 and 1991, when he was 16.
Four years earlier, when he was 12, he received a criminal caution for the indecent assault of a woman.
He also has historical convictions for burglary, actual bodily harm, possessing an air gun, and arson with intent after setting fire to a wheelie bin outside the home of an ex-girlfriend while she was inside with her children.
It emerged during the trial that he had repeatedly searched online for details about the Malkinson case, including before it was widely known as a miscarriage of justice.
