Paul Quinn guilty of 2003 rape that saw innocent man jailed for 17 years

A sex offender has been found guilty of a rape which saw an innocent man jailed for 17 years.

Paul Quinn, 52, had denied the attack on a woman in Little Hulton, Salford in 2003 for which Andrew Malkinson was wrongly convicted.

Jurors at Manchester Crown Court heard the father-of-six's DNA was found on the woman's vest and he had searched online to see how long police kept samples.

Quinn, of Exeter, Devon, and formerly of Little Hulton, Salford, was also found guilty of strangulation and grievous bodily harm.

Warning: This story contains distressing details.

The court heard Quinn, a sex offender from the age of 12, attacked the young mother as she walked home in the Salford suburb in the early hours of the morning on 19 July 2003.

She was brutally beaten, bitten and her cheekbone was fractured.

Quinn then strangled her unconscious and raped her.

Malkinson, who was working as a security guard at a local shopping centre, had protested his innocence but was wrongly picked out at as the attacker in an identity parade.

Speaking after Quinn's conviction, Malkinson said he was "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," he said.

"Instead, they wanted a quick conviction and I was a handy patsy forced to spend over 17 years in prison for his horrific crime."

Assistant Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police (GMP) Steph Parker said: "The fact that Andrew Malkinson was imprisoned for 17 years for a crime he didn't commit is clearly a failing of Greater Manchester Police, and the wider criminal justice system.

"And for that, we are absolutely sorry.

"We are determined that this cannot happen again and we also offer our apologies to the victim, who we've let down."

The Independent Office for Police Conduct said GMP's handling of the case was still under investigation.

Quinn was arrested almost two decades after Malkinson was wrongly jailed, following advances in DNA testing which meant in 2022 a billion-to-one match of his DNA profile was made with saliva left on the victim's vest top.

The court heard Quinn was a convicted sex offender at the time of the attack.

He was cautioned in 1986 for two counts of indecent assault against a female, when he was 12 years old.

In November 1992, he was convicted of two counts of underage sex, an offence which today would be classified as rape. He was aged 16 and the girl was 12 at the time of the offences.

It was this offence that led to his DNA being taken by police ten years later, which ultimately linked him to the rape in 2003.