Ex-PC recalls 'horrific' rape case which led to wrongful conviction

A retired police officer has told a jury about the "horrific" rape of a woman for which a man was wrongly convicted.

Former PC Deborah Davidson found the woman "absolutely distraught" on a motorway embankment following an attack in Little Hulton, Salford, in July 2003.

Paul Quinn, 51, is on trial at Manchester Crown Court, where a jury has heard that a man wrongly convicted of the crime, Andrew Malkinson, had spent 17 years in jail for it.

Davidson said: "It was almost like she couldn't believe what had happened to her."

Abigail Husbands, prosecuting, asked the witness about being called to speak to the victim, and said: "What state was she in?"

Davidson, at the time serving with Greater Manchester Police (GMP), replied: "Distraught. Absolutely distraught, dishevelled. She had been attacked and later revealed other injuries. The woman was absolutely distraught."

The victim suffered a serious injury to one of her breasts in the attack.

Davidson added: "I have never seen anything as horrific in all the time I have served as a police officer."

Earlier, the court heard Malkinson first appealed against his conviction in 2006, but this was dismissed.

He then made two more attempts, in 2009 and 2018, to ask the Criminal Cases Review Commission to send his case to the Court of Appeal but both were rejected.

He was released from prison in 2020, and his final attempt to clear his name in 2021 led to his appeal against his conviction being allowed by the Court of Appeal.

Quinn, who was aged 29 at the time of the attack and lived locally, was linked to the crime years later after scientific advances meant his DNA profile could be compared with samples left on the victim.

Experts estimated it was at least one billion times more likely that Quinn was a contributor to the sample found at the crime scene than that he was not.

Quinn, who has been living in Exeter, pleaded not guilty to two counts of rape, grievous bodily harm and attempting to choke or strangle his victim to render her unconscious while he carried out the attack.

The trial continues.

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