WHY WAS HE EVER LET OUT?
Beast guilty of 11 sex attacks during two week reign of terror was freed from jail in error
A Serial rapist attacked 11 victims in a two-week rampage after being freed from prison by mistake.
Joseph McCann, 34, was yesterday found guilty of kidnapping, raping and sexually assaulting women and children aged between 11 and 71.
He snatched some victims off the street, forcing them into his car at knifepoint.
He should never have been at liberty to commit the vile crimes and the head of the prison service yesterday apologised unreservedly for the catastrophic error.
McCann was freed automatically from jail in February – halfway through a three-year sentence. The decision to release him should instead have been made after consideration by the Parole Board.
This was because he was on lifelong licence for an aggravated burglary in 2007.
However this earlier offence was not factored into his three-year sentence, with the result that parole officers were not informed about his case.
Following a Ministry of Justice investigation, one staff member has been found guilty of gross misconduct and demoted.
Another probe saw a staff member who worked on McCann’s case sacked and another had their contract terminated.
Calls were made for an independent inquiry into McCann’s release and Nick Hardwick, former chairman of the Parole Board, said a senior figure should take the blame.
There were also questions about poor communication between neighbouring police forces during McCann’s rampage. it also emerged that: McCann had previously been rejected for parole three times, in 2010, 2012 and 2014;
The rapist – along with his two brothers – was one of the first people in Britain to be given an Asbo in 1999. He was just 14;
His elder brother sean killed himself in prison in March 2016;
Four men and two women have been arrested on suspicion of aiding McCann while he was on the run.
McCann, from Harrow, north-west london, was described as ‘pure evil’ as jurors heard how he drove around the country drinking vodka and snorting cocaine while performing horrific acts on his victims.
His depraved rampage, which the detective who led the investigation said was the ‘most horrendous sex offending’ she had ever seen, began in Watford on April 21.
He abducted a 21-year-old at knifepoint as she walked home from a nightclub and raped the mother of one on her own bed. Afterwards McCann told her rape is ‘what we do in the traveller community’.
A string of appalling offences followed over the next two weeks.
He targeted victims in london, Manchester and Cheshire, tricking his way into one woman’s home before tying her up and molesting her son and daughter.
He was eventually caught by police while hiding up a tree in Cheshire. A jury at the Old Bailey found McCann guilty of 37 offences including false imprisonment, rape, rape of a child, kidnap and sexual assault. The jurors sent a note to the judge that read: ‘The jury want to acknowledge the bravery of all the victims in this case and the courage it has taken for them to come forward.’
McCann refused to be interviewed at any stage of the investigation and refused to leave his cell at Belmarsh Prison in south-east london to appear in court.
Mr Hardwick said: ‘i would like to see someone more senior, someone at the head of the organisation to step up and take responsibility for what has gone wrong here. There is no way McCann should have been released and the Parole Board would not have let it happen had they been involved.
‘This has been blamed on individual human error – but this is an indication of wider problems in the system. And if you were to ask “could this happen again?” of course it could, unless wider problems are addressed.’
David Green of the think-tank Civitas said: ‘This case highlights just how dysfunctional our justice system can be.’
richard Burgon, labour’s justice spokesman, said: ‘There must now be a full independent review into what led to these shocking failures including what role deep government cuts to the Ministry of Justice budget and chaotic probation reforms played.’
Jo Farrar, chief executive of HM Prisons and Probation service, said: ‘We recognise that there were failings and we apologise unreservedly for our part in this.
‘We are committed to doing everything we possibly can to learn from this terrible case. We have taken strong and immediate action against those involved.’
McCann will be sentenced on Monday.
‘Caught while hiding up a tree’