Horrific 17 years behind bars for an innocent man: “I was an ordinary citizen in a nightmare world”

Andy Malkinson, who was imprisoned for 17 years for a rape he did not commit and who was repeatedly denied the right of appeal, has
infernal miscarriage of justice.

Andy, 58, who suffers from panic attacks, flashbacks and nightmares, says he felt compelled to tell his story in a new documentary as a warning to others.

He explains: “I wanted to prove my innocence and I did, but I lost 20 years of my life and no amount of apologies or platitudes about the lessons I learned can ever make up for what they did to me. The damage is done. The pain doesn’t go away. I’m a regular citizen. And regular people should be aware that they can be kidnapped. It can happen to anyone. And once they have you, they don’t want to let you go.”

In 2003, Andy, then 38, was arrested for rape and attempted murder in Salford, Greater Manchester. Of the day of his conviction in 2004, he recalls: “I just couldn’t believe it – absolute disbelief. Horror. And fear. It’s so crazy. It’s like a parallel nightmare world – the whole world hates you right now.” Andy was finally released in 2020 and his conviction was overturned by the Court of Appeal in July last year.

A BBC film made over three years after his release shows that his mother, Trish Hose, never doubted his innocence, but his sister Sarah believed he must have done it and never visited him in prison.

People wrongfully imprisoned for more than ten years are entitled to compensation of up to £1 million. Andy has not received a penny of that yet.

His ordeal through the justice system began when a police officer stopped him while he was riding pillion on a motorcycle, thinking he looked like an e-anthropologist of the rape suspect. The victim, who was beaten, raped, strangled and left for dead, had mistakenly identified Andy as the perpetrator during a lineup.

However, his fate was sealed when two witnesses named by Greater Manchester Police said they saw him leaving the scene.

It took 20 years for a lawyer to discover that one of them was a heroin addict. He and his girlfriend, the other witness, had been convicted a total of 26 times for crimes related to fraud. But the jury was not told about it at the time.

Manchester Evening News reporter Neal Keeling said police were under a lot of pressure to find the perpetrator. He said Andy was portrayed as an oddball, adding: “As there was no DNA evidence, everything depended on identification. The integrity of the witnesses was never questioned.” After the arrest, Andy said he was keen to give DNA samples and take part in the line-up.

But when the victim chose him, he remembers: “I just burst into tears, I couldn’t help it. I said, ‘I’ve never touched this woman, I don’t know who she is.'”

Andy’s sister Sarah reveals that she hadn’t seen him for years before the trial because he was travelling. She is now ashamed of her own reaction, admitting: “You still have those thoughts in the back of your mind – did he actually do it? I didn’t want anything to do with him – I thought, how can he be like that to a woman?” Later, Sarah cries: “I feel really bad guilt about it.”

Fortunately, Andy had the support of his mother and his Dutch ex-girlfriend Karin Schuitemaker. Trish spent hours in the library looking for cases that could help him appeal his conviction. Karin, who wrote to him in prison, said: “I know Andy, so I just knew he wouldn’t rape a woman.”

But in 2003, Andy began a life sentence. He said: “I was just terribly scared. In the first few weeks and months, you just don’t believe you’re going to make it.”

His first appeal in 2006 failed, but in 2007 the tank top worn by the victim was re-examined and found to contain DNA from a man who was not Andy.

Andy submitted an application to the Criminal Cases Review Commission, but it took two years before it became clear that the new evidence was not strong enough to warrant further investigation. The commission declined to give him an interview for the film.

Andy, who reported suicidal thoughts, could have been released after seven years if he had admitted the crime. He said: “I couldn’t just sit there and pretend I had brutally raped a woman. Should I lie? They said I was in a bind.”

After Karin found out about it, she wrote to Appeal, a group of lawyers fighting against miscarriages of justice. Founder Emily Bolton and investigator James Burley helped Andy for years – even though it emerged in 2016 that the police had destroyed important evidence: the victim’s clothing.

The breakthrough came when it was discovered that parts of the clothing had been retained by an outside organization. Around the same time in 2020, the parole board decided that Andy could be released on parole.

Emily says, “We knew the DNA evidence proved his innocence, but we didn’t know why the two witnesses said they saw Andy on the street that night.” She found that the witness, Michael Seward, was a long-time drug addict with a history of dishonesty.

Appeal had to take the police to court to find out the full truth – namely that Seward had made a deal to testify against Andy.

Greater Manchester Police declined to be interviewed for the film. In a statement, they said: “We deeply regret that Mr Malkinson has been the victim of such a serious miscarriage of justice due to the errors in our original investigation.”

Despite the DNA match with another man – who appeared in the DNA database in 2012 – no one else has been charged with the attack.

• The Wrong Man: 17 Years Behind Bars, BBC2, Thursday 6 June, 9pm.