A TRAUMATISED victim of serial sex attacker Joseph McCann revealed how she is constantly “disturbed by nightmares and pain” as he was today caged for life.
Evil McCann, 34, raped and kidnapped 11 people – including an 11-year-old boy – in a two-week reign of terror across the UK after mistakenly being freed from jail.
He was branded a “classic psychopath” as he was today jailed for a minimum 30 years – although the judge stopped short of ruling he must stay in prison until he dies.
Jurors wept as they heard of the victims’ ordeals – and one was excused from serving on the trial as tears ran down her face when the charges were read out.
One of his victims bravely told today how she suffers PTSD as a result of the horror attack and has “replaced a life of thriving with one of surviving”.
The 25-year-old, who was dragged into McCann’s car at knifepoint in Walthamstow and raped repeatedly during a 14-hour ordeal, said she has been forced to move house after suffering flashbacks.
And the victim, who only managed to escape when she smashed a vodka bottle over the monster’s head, revealed her dream of starting a family has been left in tatters.
April 21 — Watford, Hertfordshire
4am: 21-year-old woman abducted outside Pryzm nightclub, driven to her home and raped in her own bed.
April 25 — Walthamstow, London
12.30am: A woman aged 25 is abducted while walking home from the Tube and subjected to 14-hour ordeal.
April 25 — Edgware, London
12.15pm: A 21-year-old woman is abducted but her sister, 18, escapes. The 21-year-old and 25-year-old earlier victim manage to escape in Watford.
May 5 — Haslingden, Lancashire
Early hours: A mother is tied up in her own home while her daughter, 17, and son, 11, are raped and sexually assaulted in the room next door.
May 5 — Ramsbottom, Greater Manchester
1.30pm: A 71-year-old woman loading her car with shopping at Morrisons is abducted and raped. She is still in the car when McCann strikes again.
May 5 — Heywood, Greater Manchester
3.30pm: A 13-year-old girl is kidnapped and sexually assaulted. She and the 71-year-old woman escape at Knutsford services shortly before 6pm.
May 5 — Congleton, Cheshire
6.30pm: Two 14-year-old girls are abducted in the Fiat Punto stolen from the 71-year-old woman.
She added: “I am still unable to walk around after dark. I have to be picked up at the tube station to walk home in the evening. Even in the daytime I often feel jumpy and afraid, at home or outside.
“Going for a run, going out for the evening, going on holiday — doing any of these things alone is now impossible, and it will take a long time to regain that freedom.
“This is a significant and limiting change in my lifestyle. I used to be a very independent person with very little fear of going out and doing things alone. I am now much more dependent on other people, which changes those relationships.”
The victim explained in harrowing detail how her work has been affected by the attack – meaning she has suffered a huge loss of income and is left feeling “worried and insecure”.
She also told how she suffers “chronic pain throughout my body as a result of both whiplash and the assault” but is “nervous” about undergoing physical treatment that would remind her of the nightmare and now has to check for “distressing content” in books and films.
The victim continued: “The future now looks very different for me. Before this crime, I was optimistic about my life and I felt safe in the world.
“My friendships and my career were flourishing, I was planning to take my driving test, and the plants I’d sown in my old garden were beginning to bear fruit. My partner and I were talking about starting a family together in the next three years.
“My aspirations, both small and big, and my vision of a positive future, have been violently taken from me. To replace a life of thriving with one of surviving is deeply demoralising and difficult.”
Sick McCann wore wigs, told victims he loved them and claimed they were part of a “gypsy initiation ritual” as he carried out a horrific rape spree across the UK.
McCann’s gruesome rampage finally came to an end in May this year following a dramatic five-hour stand-off with cops after the fiend fled up a tree.
He then told police: “If you had caught me for the first two, the rest of this wouldn’t have happened.”
The cowardly rapist, who hid under a blanket in his cell for the duration of his trial, was last week found guilty at the Old Bailey of 37 charges including the rape of a child under 13, kidnap, and sexual assault concerning 11 alleged victims.
They were all aged between 11 and 71, and the offences occurred across five police force areas over a two-week period between 20 April and 5 May.
Locking him up, Justice Edis said: “This was a campaign of rape, violence and abduction of a kind which I have never seen or heard of before.
“Among other things you are a coward and violent bully and a paedophile.
“You are entirely obsessed with yourself. In your world other people exist only for your pleasure and you have no ability to see the world in anybody’s eyes other than your own.
“You are a classic psychopath.”
McCann had mistakenly been freed automatically half-way through a three-year sentence for burglary and theft in February this year.
A probe has now been launched by the Ministry of Justice into why McCann was not recalled to prison after committing another burglary following his release from an indeterminate sentence for aggravated burglary in 2008.
The Parole Board had failed to assess whether he was suitable for release – leaving him free to embark on his horrific spree.
The same blunder was the reason London Bridge terrorist Usman Khan was free to kill two people in a knife attack last Friday.
In 2008, McCann had been ordered to serve a sentence of Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) when he burgled the home of an 85-year-old man and threatened to stab him.
This meant after a minimum term of two-and-a-half years he’d be freed from jail only when the Parole Board decided it was safe to do so.
He was out licence from prison when he was arrested in August last year for burglary and should have been recalled to jail – allowing the Parole Board to be informed by the Probation Service about the case.
But he was instead remanded into custody and then given a three-year determinate sentence, which did not take into account his earlier offending.
And like London Bridge terrorist Usman Khan, McCann was then automatically freed to carry out further crimes.
Following his arrest in May, the Ministry of Justice carried out a serious further offence review into McCann’s case.
The review is understood to have identified an error in the probation service failing to recall McCann when he committed the burglary.
Of four probation staff in the South East and Eastern division who were directly involved in McCann’s supervision, one was demoted, according to PA.
Jo Farrar, chief executive of HM Prisons and Probation Service, has “apologised unreservedly” for failings in the case.
McCann’s rape spree began in the early hours of April 21 when he bundled a 21-year-old mum into his car at knifepoint as she walked home from a club in Watford.
They then drove to her home where McCann forced her in to her bedroom as her son slept next door and donned a wig as he raped her, saying: “It is normal, it is what they do in the traveller community.”
Exclusive footage obtained by The Sun Online showed McCann pull into a BP garage in Watford just after 9am on April 21.
The young woman was in the passenger seat of his Ford Mondeo at the time.
She reported the attack to police and McCann’s details were put on the Police National Computer and a prison recall was issued by Hertfordshire Police.
But three days later, he subjected a 25-year-old woman to a 14-hour horror ordeal after bundling her into a car when she left a station in Walthamstow.
He raped the terrified victim repeatedly and told her she would never escape him.
McCann then picked up a 21-year-old girl walking in Edgware with her younger sister – while keeping his second victim captive.
Her sibling managed to escape but she was dragged into the car and forced to perform sex acts on the second victim and was also raped several times by McCann.
She told the court: “He told me he had a knife and he was going to cut my throat and drown me.”
The ordeal only ended when the 25-year-old smashed a vodka bottle over McCann’s head when he tried to book them into the Phoenix Lodge hotel in Watford, Herts.
Police then publicly released details of the double kidnap and rape the next day and later issued CCTV.
McCann was finally named on April 30 – with cops offering a £20,000 reward for information after linking him to the attack in Watford.
But the serial sex attacker continued his chilling journey across the country – preying on the mum and her two children in Haslingden, Lancs, on May 5 after meeting her in a bar.
After tying up the mother, he pinned the daughter and 11-year-old down and sexually assaulted them – forcing the teenager to jump from a window and limp to a relative’s house with a fractured heel.
The girl, whose brother has been left so traumatised he is unable to speak, said: “Because it happened to me and my brother it has kind of ruined the family.”
After the horror attack, McCann then made his way to Ramsbottom where he pounced on a 71-year old pensioner who had just finished loading her bags into her Fiat Punto at Morrisons.
He attacked her in a nearby industrial estate after telling her “so, we will have sex now” and then picked up a 13-year-old girl as the OAP drove him in her car on the same day.
He swigged from a bottle of sparkling wine as he told the girl he was in love with her before abusing her.
She said: “When I was in the car he tried to stab me in the leg with a pen. He kept saying that apparently I am going to go out with him, he asked me if I had a boyfriend.”
They managed to escape when McCann pulled into Knutsford services on the M6 but the monster continued unfazed to Congleton, Cheshire, to continue his rampage.
McCann snatched two 14-year-old girls and threatened to “chop them up” a machete as he forced them into the Fiat.
But as he drove away he was spotted by a police patrol car and sped off with the two terrified girls screaming in the back seat.
Dashcam footage showed the fiend driving the wrong way on a roundabout and smashing into a Mercedes as he desperately tried to flee police.
After losing officers in a housing estate, McCann then abandoned the car with the two girls inside and was next picked up on CCTV running past a man cleaning a driveway and dashing through his garden.
He swapped his T-shirt with clothes drying on a washing line and hopped in a taxi from a restaurant in Stoke.
McCann then climbed up a tree as negotiators along with paramedics were deployed to the scene.
He was finally arrested at 2.36am – five hours after he was first spotted cowering among the leaves on a heat sensor.
McCann, of Harrow, North West London, refused to appear at his Old Bailey trial and didn’t give evidence.
The court was told there was no motivation for his sickening crimes as McCann displayed such “contempt” for his victims he “enjoyed making them suffer”.
His victims today were praised for their bravery by the police, prosecutors and jurors – some of whom had wept as they heard the harrowing evidence.
CPS prosecutor Tetteh Turkson said: “His victims endured horrifying acts of sexual violence and were subjected to a truly terrifying ordeal.
“It was through persistence and bravery that some of them managed to escape.
‘They showed great strength of character in recounting their stories to police and giving evidence to the court – reliving some of what must have been the darkest moments of their lives.”
It can now be reported that four men and two women have been arrested on suspicion of assisting McCann and released under investigation.
The men, aged 27, 30, 34 and 66, and two women, aged 32 and 64, were arrested at addresses in Cheshunt, Watford, Aylesbury and Birmingham.
McCann was convicted of 10 counts of false imprisonment, seven counts of rape, one count of rape of a child, two counts of causing or inciting a person to engage in sexual activity without consent and seven counts of kidnap.
He was also found guilty of 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.
‘I am requesting that this statement be read out in court because during the last few months I have looked for reassurance that I am not alone in the stories of other victims and survivors.
‘I hope that putting this on the record can do the same for someone else. My thoughts are constantly with the other victims of these attacks.
‘Immediately after the incident, I was scared to go home and didn’t go back to my house for weeks. I found it difficult to sleep and was very physically weak even walking up and down the stairs was hard, I barely left the house and didn’t go to work.
‘I had to move house, which was an expensive and emotionally distressing process — my house, my road and my neighbourhood was now full of reminders which triggered flashbacks and made me feel constantly unsafe. I lost a tight-knit community of neighbours.
‘I felt acutely aware that everyone on the road knew what had happened. I could no longer share a home with my housemate, who was also traumatised by what had happened. I couldn’t travel anywhere unaccompanied, or be in the house alone. It took me weeks to be able to walk a few doors down the road to a local shop on my own, with my thumb hovering over the button on the panic phone in my pocket.
‘When I went back to work, I had to be accompanied to and from my workplace by my partner or a friend, and take much more regular breaks as I now often feel overwhelmed by time spent with a lot of people.
‘I am still unable to walk around after dark. I have to be picked up at the tube station to walk home in the evening. Even in the daytime I often feel jumpy and afraid, at home or outside.
‘Going for a run, going out for the evening, going on holiday — doing any of these things alone is now impossible, and it will take a long time to regain that freedom.
‘This is a significant and limiting change in my lifestyle. I used to be a very independent person with very little fear of going out and doing things alone. I am now much more dependent on other people, which changes those relationships.
‘It also impacts my partner, his studies and his social life as he spends time helping me, even as he suffers with the traumatic psychological fallout of having heard me being abducted and having feared that I was dead.
‘I have found some solace in therapeutic activities and techniques which help to ease my mind from dissociative episodes, intrusive thoughts and flashbacks.
‘This means that my life as a young woman in her twenties looks very different to how it did — I spend more time at home, managing my trauma, where I used to spend my time throwing myself into the work I love, hanging out with friends, living spontaneously and engaging gregariously with the world. This has been a huge loss for me, especially at what was such an exciting time in my life and career.
‘As things stand now, I am still unable to take on as much work or the same kinds of work that I used to. I’ve suffered a huge loss of income as a result of this, and this financial precarity makes me feel worried and insecure.
‘Where I used to find work joyful and purposeful, my limited energy and inability to focus or concentrate now means that my work is a source of stress. It is difficult to have the motivation to do even the most basic tasks at work, at home or for my own self-care.
‘I suffer from chronic pain throughout my body as a result of both whiplash and the assault, but am nervous about seeking physical treatment which might trigger my body’s memory of the assault.
‘A routine smear test would mean reliving the forensic process I underwent hours after being attacked, and I worry about my health as a result. My sleep remains disturbed by nightmares and physical pain, and I am chronically fatigued.
‘I continue to have flashbacks, to dissociate and to have intrusive and emotionally distressing thoughts as a result of the trauma incurred. This has also led me to avoid things which could remind me of the event and trigger that response, such as my old neighbourhood, or physical intimacy with my partner.
‘I now rigorously check for distressing content before I read a book, watch a film or TV programme or go to a play. I have lost interest in things I used to love, like playing music and going swimming.
‘These things that came easily to me, that were so much of who I am, have become hard work.
‘I have become more socially isolated from my friends and peers, because it’s hard to be close to someone if they don’t know what I’m going through, but it’s even harder to tell them, and several months of silence or superficial conversation takes its toll on a relationship.
‘I often feel like I’m hiding a terrible secret, and I can’t connect with people like I used to as a result. When I do spend time working or socialising, I am having to work hard to seem like my old self, which takes twice the energy.
‘On the other hand, the people who do know my partner, family and close friends, as well as my employer at the time now know far more than I would have been comfortable disclosing to them, as a result of the graphic details of the assault which were gratuitously published in the press throughout the trial.
‘When I think about what they have discovered in the news, and how they must feel about that, I feel exposed and vulnerable all over again, and sad that I can’t protect them from that horror. Witnessing the ripples of trauma that have affected mine and my partner’s family and friends has been very distressing.
‘My partner and I now both exhibit the symptoms of PTSD and it’s hard to hold on to our relationship as we knew it whilst balancing caring for each other in a traumatised state.
‘The process of seeking help for the effects of this trauma has been complicated, After being told there was a waiting list of eight months to a year for long-term counselling, I sought counselling myself after several months as a way to have some control over that process.
‘I am now in therapy, but paying for it myself makes me feel let down and like I am betraying the services that I know should be available for victims and survivors. I have been met with the utmost care, empathy and respect by nurses, doctors, advisers and police officers, to whom I owe more thanks than it is possible to express.
‘However, the evident scarcity, underresourcing and overstretching of specialist services for survivors has intensified my sense of isolation and abandonment by a society in which I used to feel safe. It feels like what has happened to me is not a social priority unless it’s being sensationalised in the news.
‘Whilst I am glad that justice is being sought, the trial was also an intensely traumatic event in which I had to relive what happened to me in great detail.
‘The misplaced guilt which often plagues victims of rape and sexual assault is well-known and documented, and my experience has been no different.
‘The questions I was asked when I testified in court were therefore not new to me. They are the same questions which keep me up at night and go round and round my mind in the day — could I, should I have acted differently, got away sooner? Was this failure to escape sooner than I did in some way my fault?
‘The defence’s questions echoed, and threatened to confirm, these intrusive and distressing thoughts. The fact that I am here to write this statement is testament to the answer: no. I had one chance. I did what I could in a situation that thankfully most people have no experience or understanding of – a situation for which nothing in my life had prepared me — and I survived.
‘The future now looks very different for me. Before this crime, I was optimistic about my life and I felt safe in the world.
‘My friendships and my career were flourishing, I was planning to take my driving test, and the plants I’d sown in my old garden were beginning to bear fruit. My partner and I were talking about starting a family together in the next three years.
‘My aspirations, both small and big, and my vision of a positive future, have been violently taken from me. To replace a life of thriving with one of surviving is deeply demoralising and difficult.
‘I can only hope that this process will take us one step closer to building a society in which rape and sexual assault are never excused, in which the voices of victims and survivors are heard and respected, and in which this can never happen to anybody else.’
After the verdicts, Scotland Yard’s Detective Chief Inspector Katherine Goodwin said his crimes were the worst sexual offences her team had ever seen.
DCI Goodwin described McCann as “evil” “manipulative” and “cunning”.
She added: “He clearly is a horrendously dangerous individual. Each person feared for their lives while they were held against their will.”
