Longer prison sentences for Britain’s two worst rapists
TWO of the country’s most depraved rapists have had their minimum jail sentences raised from 30 to 40 years.
The attorney general had referred the cases of Joseph McCann, 35, and Reynhard Sinaga, 37, to the Court of Appeal seeking to prevent both men from ever being released.
Judges increased their minimum terms but ruled out imposing whole life sentences, saying these could be justified only by loss of life.
Sinaga has been convicted of 136 rapes against 48 men but is believed to have had more than 200 victims – making him the most prolific rapist in history. He lured young men back to his Manchester flat and plied them with drink believed to have contained a date-rape drug.
Around 150 possible victims of Sinaga have come forward since he was jailed in January.
The men contacted detectives after reading coverage of the case. Greater Manchester Police confirmed 23 of them as potential victims based on videos and belongings Sinaga had taken as ‘trophies’.
But at least 11 were completely new cases, taking the total to 206.
McCann was branded a ‘classic psychopath’ by a judge who handed him 33 life sentences last year.
He was found guilty by a jury of 37 charges including rape, sexual assault, kidnap and false imprisonment relating to 11 victims aged from 11 to 71. In a 15-day rampage he targeted victims in Manchester, Hertfordshire and London before a huge manhunt ended with him being found in a tree in Cheshire.
The ruling rejecting whole life terms – but adding a decade in jail – was handed down by five senior judges including Lord Burnett, the Lord Chief Justice.
Lord Burnett said: ‘The offending in the cases of McCann and Sinaga, very serious indeed though it is, does not, in our judgment, call for either to receive a whole life tariff.
‘This is not to minimise the seriousness of their offending, but instead to ensure the most severe sentence... is reserved, save exceptionally, either for the most serious cases involving loss of life, or when a substantive plan to murder of similar seriousness is interrupted close to fulfilment.’
A teenager who was raped by McCann told the BBC the sentence extension of ten years ‘just isn’t enough in my eyes as a victim’.
She said: ‘I will have to live with that fear I felt on that day for my whole life, it still haunts me. I was expecting him to get life, therefore I am upset and disappointed.’