Inquiry call over girl rape case

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The abduction and rape of a 15-year-old girl by a man previously convicted of rape has led to a call for an inquiry into the way his case was managed.

Wrexham AM John Marek spoke out after Alan Grant, also known as Weston, was jailed for life on Friday.

Grant, from Stockport, Greater Manchester, attacked the girl in Wrexham last October.

Concerns were raised when it emerged Grant, 49, was jailed in 1991 for raping a woman in West Sussex.

Children's charity NSPCC Cymru/Wales has also called for changes in the way sex offenders are managed.

It was a fault with our system of sentencing John Marek AM

Mr Marek, who is also the former MP for Wrexham, said the Home Office would have to "learn lessons" from the case.

"I don't think that this person should have been allowed out," said Mr Marek.

"He was clearly a danger, it was known and it was a fault with our system of sentencing."

Mr Marek called for safeguards to be tightened in the cases of supervised sex offenders.

It emerged at Mold Crown Court that Grant had finished a supervision order after his first conviction for rape about six weeks before his attack on the Wrexham girl.

The comments were made in the wake of the NSPCC's call for an overhaul of sex offenders' management in order to stop inadequately supervised offenders from going on to offend again.

The girl was abducted in Wrexham and driven across north Wales

Grant snatched the teenager in the Highfield area of Wrexham on Friday, 20 October.

He forced the girl into his van in Wrexham and subjected her to a 15-hour ordeal.

She was threatened with a machete, tied up and driven to a secluded spot. After raping the teenager, Grant drove for another hour before attempting to rape her again.

Greater Manchester Police were very robust in their management of the order but unfortunately we haven't got the resources to watch someone 24 hours a day Det Supt Peter Chalinor, North Wales Police She was eventually freed 70 miles (113km) away in Bangor.

Grant pleaded guilty to kidnap and rape at Mold Crown Court, with a recommendation by the judge that he should serve at least seven years.

Shotgun

He was jailed for 12 years in 1991 after raping a woman, having beaten her husband and locked him in a cupboard at their home in West Sussex.

Grant broke into the couple's cottage wearing a mask and armed with a pump-action shotgun, then tied up the man before raping his 26-year-old wife.

Sentencing Grant for the latest rape, Judge Stephen Clarke jailed him with a minimum tariff of seven years.

The judge told him: "Your behaviour certainly manifests quite clearly a perverted, what might be called psychopathic, tendency.

"If you are at large you are likely to remain a danger to women for an indefinite period of time."

Speaking just after the case, Det Supt Peter Chalinor, who led the North Wales Police investigation, said Greater Manchester Police were "very robust in their management of the order but unfortunately we haven't got the resources to watch someone 24 hours a day".

He said: "We now know he had been thinking about this (fantasy) for a long time and then he's just gone out in a van, totally off his own patch, on the hunt for a victim.

"Save for 24-hour surveillance, there wasn't much more we could do. He was having these thoughts but there were no outward signs of what he was planning."

Ed Beltrami, chief prosecutor for the Crown Prosecution Service in north Wales, said Weston could have been jailed for breaching the requirements of the Sex Offenders Register but it would not have prevented his latest crime.

He said: "One does see people imprisoned for failing to register. The normal sentence is around six months.

"Bearing in mind his last offence of that nature was in 2004, and this offence took place in 2006, I don't think it would have made much difference.

"In terms of surveillance that type of order is not that effective. It is purely for keeping tabs on where they are."