A retired police officer has told a jury about the “horrific” rape of a woman in Salford for which a man was wrongly convicted.
Ex-Pc Deborah Davidson was called to the scene after a woman in her 30s reported being dragged down a remote motorway embankment, beaten and raped twice in the early hours of July 19 2003, in Little Hulton.
Andrew Malkinson, a security guard originally from Grimsby, Lincolnshire, was convicted of the attack the following year and spent 17 years in jail, but was a victim of a miscarriage of justice, Manchester Crown Court heard.
DNA evidence later linked another local man, Paul Quinn, 51, to the attack, which he denies.
Abigail Husbands, prosecuting, asked Mrs Davidson about being called to speak to the victim, and said: “What state was she in?”
The witness, at the time serving with Greater Manchester Police (GMP), replied: “Distraught. Absolutely distraught, dishevelled. She had been attacked and later revealed other injuries. The woman was absolutely distraught.
“It was almost like she couldn’t believe what had happened to her.”
The victim suffered an almost severed nipple in the attack.
Mrs Davidson added: “I have never seen anything as horrific in all the time I have served as a police officer.”
Earlier, the court heard Mr Malkinson first appealed against his conviction in 2006, but this was dismissed.
He then made two more attempts, in 2009 and 2018, to ask the Criminal Cases Review Commission to send his case to the Court of Appeal, but both were rejected.
His final attempt in 2021 led to his appeal against his conviction being allowed by the Court of Appeal.
Quinn, aged 29 at the time of the attack and who lived locally before moving to Exeter, Devon, was only linked to the crime years later, after scientific advances matched his DNA profile from samples left on the victim.
His DNA sample was taken by police in December 2012 and matched to the sample from the crime scene in October 2022, the court heard. Mr Malkinson was released from prison in December 2020.
The DNA findings estimate it would be at least one billion times more likely if Quinn was a contributor to the sample found at the crime scene than if he was not.
The defendant has pleaded not guilty to two counts of rape, grievous bodily harm and attempting to choke or strangle his victim to render her unconscious while he carried out the attack.
The trial was adjourned until Thursday morning.
By Pat Hurst, Press Association
