A man convicted of a horrific series of rapes and kidnaps against women and children earlier this year was free to commit his crimes after authorities failed to realise he should have been in jail for a previous violent offence.
Joseph McCann, 34, was found guilty on Friday afternoon at the Old Bailey on 37 counts relating to 11 women and children and could face a life sentence. He attacked his victims, ranging from an 11-year-old boy to a 71-year-old woman, during a fortnight-long rampage that stretched from London to Cheshire.
The appalling offences included attacks on a teenage brother and sister in front of each other in their own home.
After the jury took less than six hours of deliberation return the verdicts, there were immediate calls for an inquiry into how McCann had been freed despite being subject to an imprisonment for public protection (IPP) sentence. This sentence, for a burglary armed with a knife in 2008, should have resulted in his recall to prison after a new conviction for burglary and theft in 2017.
After an internal investigation, the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has accepted that he was freed in error.
The incendiary case is likely to spark an immediate political debate as probation and parole experts warned that McCann’s mistaken release earlier this year came against the background of austerity-driven cuts to the justice system.
Earlier, Usman Khan, the London Bridge attacker, was revealed to have appealed successfully against the length of his IPP sentence in 2013 and then released without referral to the Parole Board despite a judge saying that the body should review his case before he was freed.
McCann’s attacks took place over two weeks in April and May this year. His victims were taken off the street and subjected to barbaric ordeals.
After delivering their unanimous verdicts the jury sent a note praising the “bravery and courage” of the victims to come forward and the hard work of the police.
McCann was not in the dock having refused to attend his trial. The judge, Mr Justice Edis, said he was considering a life sentence and would also at seek an explanation of his licence conditions at the time of the offences.
A woman aged 21 was taken from a London street in broad daylight while out with her sister. Her pleas to be spared were ignored, and McCann’s attack left her in physical agony, the court heard.
McCann told his first victim, whom he abducted from a street in Watford, he had just got out of jail after “doing 18 years”.
The trial of McCann produced some of the most harrowing evidence heard in a British court in recent times. Jurors and members of the court were frequently upset by the distressing nature of the evidence, with the judge ending one day’s hearing early after a tape was played of a 999 call by the 17-year-old girl who was attacked in front of her brother.
Later in the case, Mr Justice Edis told the jury: “I gave you a warning that you would have an emotional reaction in this case and there is no doubt that warning turned out to be right.”
McCann’s first attack took place in Watford on 21 April, when he snatched a 21-year-old woman at knifepoint on the street as she walked home from a club.
It was days before that attack was linked to two others in east and north London. On 25 April, a woman aged 25 was dragged into a car in east London, imprisoned and repeatedly attacked in a 14-hour ordeal of “shocking depravity and violence”, the prosecutor, John Price QC, told the court.
With her still in the car, McCann abducted a 21-year-old woman in north London, who was also repeatedly attacked and threatened.
He took the two women to Watford before their nightmare ended when one smashed a vodka bottle over McCann’s head and passing builders helped them escape.
McCann lay low as a massive police manhunt tried to capture him over the next 10 days.
On 5 May, having met a woman in the north-west of England while out drinking, he tricked his way back to her home, waited for others to leave then tied her up. He then raped her 11-year-old son and 17-year-old daughter next door. The family’s ordeal only ended after the girl leapt from a window and ran to a neighbour’s house to call the police.
Hours later, still in the north-west, he abducted and raped a woman aged 71 and then abducted and sexually assaulted a 13-year-old girl while the woman was still his prisoner.
That evening they escaped and McCann headed to Congleton, Cheshire and abducted two 14-year-old girls. He fled after crashing his car, leaving the girls unharmed.
McCann was eventually captured early in the morning of 6 May in fields near Congleton, after being surrounded by officers, and climbing up a tree to avoid them.
He taunted officers by saying: “If you had caught me for the first two, the rest of this wouldn’t have happened.” He was tied to crime scenes via DNA.
In May, when McCann was still at large, having started his attacks, the MoJ claimed a proper risk assessment would have been done before his release. That turned out not to be the case.
McCann had an extensive criminal history. In 2008, he was convicted of aggravated burglary after breaking into the house of an 85-year-old man and threatening him with a knife, demanding money.
He received an IPP sentence with a minimum tariff of two and a half years. The Parole Board decided he was safe to release in March 2017, on a 10-year licence.
In August 2017, he was arrested for burglary and theft, and sentenced to three and a half years in prison. The halfway point of his sentence was reached in February 2019, and he was released automatically.
Under the terms of his licence for the 2008 conviction, McCann should have been returned to prison, the MoJ accepted after an internal inquiry. The department says the inquiry report has been made available to McCann’s victims but it was not its practice to publish it.
While extensive, his past offending was much less severe than the string of rapes for which he was convicted. He had in the past been convicted of affray for hitting someone in the face and also possession of a knife.
Harry Fletcher, the former assistant general secretary of the probation officers’ union Napo, said cuts imposed by the government on the prisons and probation service since 2010 might have been a factor in the mistaken release of McCann.
“There is a much greater chance of errors being made than ever before,” he said. “The background to this is that the budgets of both the probation service and prisons have systematically been cut over the last decade, so there is less staff and those that do remain have bigger caseloads.
“A recent parliamentary answer shows that one person a week is let out wrongly. There has never been a consequence as devastating as this.”
Nick Hardwick, the former inspector of prisons and former chair of the parole board, called for an inquiry. “When the system is under so much pressure, that’s the sort of circumstances where mistakes are going to be made,” he said. “We need to be careful about assuming it was an individual [error] rather than it being a systemic failure.
“The probation service is in chaos and people are struggling with workloads.”
The charges were 10 counts of false imprisonment, seven counts of rape, one count of raping a child, two counts of causing or inciting a person to engage in sexual activity without consent, seven counts of kidnap, one count of attempted kidnap, three counts of causing or inciting a child under 13 to engage in sexual activity, three counts of assault by penetration, one count of sexual assault, and two counts of committing a sexual offence with intent.
McCann will be sentenced on Monday. Mr Justice Edis told the court that 33 of the offences carried discretionary life sentences, which he was considering in the case.
He told McCann’s defence that arrangements would be made for the defendant to attend court or appear by video link if he wanted.
