Coroner defends medical treatment for heart condition death rapist

MEDICAL CARE given to a category A prisoner, known as the M25 rapist, before he died from a heart condition, was at least as good as he could have expected in the community, a coroner has ruled.

Antoni Imiela was given seven life sentences in 2004 for a series of rapes across the Home Counties against women and girls as young as 10.

In 2012, he was given a further 12-year sentence after being found guilty of rape, indecent assault and another serious sex offence against a 31-year-old mother of two.

An inquest in Wakefield heard how Imiela, 63, had been suffering from a heart condition when he was found slumped in a chair in his one-person cell on D-wing at the top security HMP Wakefield on March 8 2018.

The prisoner was given CPR and taken to Pinderfields Hospital in the city but was pronounced dead.

The hearing heard how he died from the heart condition cirrhosis cardiomyopathy.

Assistant coroner Oliver Longstaff said Imiela’s son Aidan had reported that his father had complained to him in the days before his death about the standard of his medical treatment in prison.

But Mr Longstaff said inquiries, including one by the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman, made it clear that his care was at least as good as it would have been outside prison and the response to his collapse was probably better than he could have expected in the community.

The coroner said: “It seems to me, in line with the conclusions of the ombudsman, that the medical care he received was every bit of the standard he could have expected in the community.”

Mr Longstaff noted one recommendation from the ombudsman’s investigation about how the first officer into Imiela’s cell did not use the appropriate code to report the incident but the coroner said this had no impact on the eventual outcome. He recorded a conclusion of death by natural causes.

Last year, it was revealed that Imiela had been referred for parole a week after the controversial parole decision on another notorious serial sex attacker, John Worboys.