Teen ‘leapt from window to escape evil rapist’
‘Attacker struck after meeting her mum in bar’
ATEENAGE victim told a court that the man accused of raping her and her little brother ‘is pure evil’.
Joseph McCann, 34, is accused of attacking the pair at knifepoint in their Haslingden home after tying up their mother with electrical flex and forcing her to listen to the muffled screams.
The court was told the 17-year-old girl leapt from a window to escape McCann after he told her he planned to take her to Europe, allegedly adding ‘you’re mine’. The trial continues.
AN alleged serial rapist bound a mother he met in a Haslingden bar with electrical flex and forced her to listen to the muffled screams of her children as he raped them both, a trial heard.
Joseph McCann woke the 17-year-old daughter and 11-year-old boy and he raped them both in the next room as the other watched, Old Bailey jurors heard.
Hours later he held a 71-year-old and a 13-yearold girl prisoner in the pensioner’s car while he sexually assaulted them, it is alleged.
McCann, aged 34, from Harrow, London, denies 37 charges relating to 11 alleged victims aged between 11 and 71.
Prosecutor John Price QC said he had met the mother in a bar in Haslingden in the early hours of Sunday, May 5 and took advantage of her drunken state to take her home, jurors heard.
When they arrived at her house, he allegedly tied [her] to her bed using electrical wiring. McCann woke the two children and raped them both in the next room, prosecutors said.
Jurors heard McCann might argue the sexual acts were consensual or deny they ever took place.
The court heard the woman was ‘very drunk’ and McCann ‘exploited her vulnerability’ by going with her to her house in the taxi.
“There were various comings and goings during the night at the house, of friends and family, until there came a time when apart from the woman and her two children, he was the only person there,” Mr Price said. “It was then that he struck.”
While the 11-year-old boy cut his mother free from the wires binding her to the bed, the daughter leapt naked from the first floor, fracturing her right heel as she ran before calling the police.
She told them crying hysterically and gasping in pain: “I need the police. I just jumped out the window. He has got a knife. He cut me. I really hurt my foot. Please come before he hurts my brother and my mother.”
Meanwhile, McCann allegedly left by the front door and escaped on a child’s bicycle towards a bus stop.
From that area he moved on to Ramsbottom, where a 71-year-old was loading her shopping into the boot of her car at lunchtime the following day, it is claimed.
Mr Price said: “She was to be detained in her own car during the following five hours or so.
“Amidst other gross sexual indignity and violence inflicted upon her.”
A major investigation was sparked spanning from London to the North West after reports a string of women and children were abducted and sexually assaulted.
Not guilty pleas have been entered on all the charges relating to the 11 women and children.
After the alleged incident, the mum tried to comfort her son, saying: “It’s OK, son. We are alive,” jurors heard. The motherof-two described her ordeal on May 5 in a police interview played during McCann’s trial.
She said: “I have come back in a taxi where this fella has said ‘I will come with you to make sure you get home OK’.”
The woman went on: “He tied my legs together and then he turned me back over again but he kept coming in saying ‘you watch, or say anything I will slit your throat.
“I said ‘are you going to kill us all’ and he said ‘shut up’. I could just hear him in my bedroom with (the children). It was like I was in and out of consciousness. I don’t know if it was fright.
“I was trying to get out but I thought if he sees me he would kill me. He had my children in the bedroom.”
The woman told officers she heard her daughter taking a shower and ask, “is that OK now?”.
She described how the girl then jumped out of a bedroom window to escape.
The mother said: “He (the attacker) must have run down the stairs to go get to her and my son, God bless him, he must have run downstairs, put the safety catches on.
“He said ‘mum, mum, we are safe. (My sister) saved us’.”
● THE trial continues