A serial rapist who carried out a string of sex attacks on 11 women and children across England has been given 33 life sentences. Joseph McCann’s victims were aged between 11 and 71 and included three women who were abducted off the street at knifepoint and repeatedly raped.

He was found guilty of 37 offences at the Old Bailey on Friday. Mr Justice Edis said McCann, who must serve a minimum of 30 years, was “a threat to children” and “a paedophile”. The judge described him as a “classic psychopath” and called for an “independent and systematic” investigation into why “the system failed to protect” McCann’s victims.

The convicted burglar had been released from prison following a probation error in February before he embarked on a cocaine and vodka-fuelled rampage. The 34-year-old’s “spree of sex attacks” started in Watford in April before he moved to London, Greater Manchester and Cheshire over a two-week period.  Sentencing McCann at the Old Bailey, Mr Justice Edis described him as “a coward, a violent bully and a paedophile”. He said his victims would probably “never properly recover”, adding: “This was a campaign of rape, violence and abduction of a kind which I have never seen or heard of before.” (BBC)…[+]