More negligence from Britain's politicized police

With terrible results

A serial sex attacker raped two 15-year-old girls after police failed to link his DNA to a string of earlier offences, a court was told yesterday. Mark Campbell allegedly began a string of sex attacks against women in West Sussex in 1998, four years before he was first arrested in 2002. He gave DNA samples after being detained on suspicion of fondling himself while watching a woman in her room, but an “oversight” meant that the swabs were not sent off for analysis until four years later, Chichester Crown Court was told.

Between 2002 and 2006 Mr Campbell, a welder from Chichester, West Sussex, is alleged to have continued to offend, raping the teenagers as well as carrying out two sexual assaults, two burglaries and an attempted indecent assault. By the time of his arrest in 2002 he had already raped one woman and attacked a number of others including a 12-year-old, the court was told.

His first alleged victim, now aged 36, described yesterday how he assaulted her in February 1998 after tying her up in her home using a pair of her daughter’s tights as her three young children slept in the same house. Another alleged victim, a pregnant former hotel worker, fought back tears in the witness box as she described how she was raped in May 2000 when she was aged 21. She said that she was threatened and then assaulted when she woke up to find a man in her bedroom at the staff quarters of the hotel where she worked.

Mr Campbell, 38, a father of two, was arrested in 2006 after his DNA sample from 2002 was tested during a review of offences linked under Operation Bobcat, the police investigation into a series of sex attacks in West Sussex. Christine Laing, QC, for the prosecution, told the jury that it was “very unfortunate” that the swabs were not sent off when they should have been. One of the strategies of the investigating team in Operation Bobcat was to take DNA samples by means of a swab on a voluntary basis from men in the surrounding area. After Mr Campbell’s arrest it was considered appropriate to obtain a swab from him. This was stored “in appropriate conditions” but, through an oversight, was not sent for testing.

Ms Laing said that the delay made no difference to the “evidential impact” of the match made between the swabs in 2006. “Where it does impact, however, is in the delay in bringing this matter to trial, and the effect that has on the recollection of everyone involved. This is particularly so in relation to the defendant, who was only asked for the first time about these matters in 2006.”

Earlier, the court was told that Mr Campbell preyed on “vulnerable young women” over the six-year period from 1998 to 2004. He allegedly assaulted a 12-year-old girl as she walked home from school and a 16-year-old girl as her younger sister slept in the same bed. In February 2000, it is alleged, he indecently assaulted a 19-year-old Italian student living in Chichester after holding a knife to her throat and blindfolding and stripping her.

His first victim was a 27-year-old woman who was attacked in her home in Bognor Regis in February 1998, the jury was told. Her assailant left DNA evidence on her body that was later matched to that found after other attacks, including the rape of the hotel worker in 2000. By then police were convinced that the assaults were the work of a serial offender but officers could not match the DNA to a name until Mr Campbell’s swabs were tested last year. The series of attacks lasted until August 2004, and all took place within a 25-mile radius of Mr Campbell’s home, the court was told. His final alleged victims were two 15-year-old girls whom he raped within minutes of each other after befriending them and plying them with alcohol in his van in a car park in Pagham, West Sussex, on August 26, 2004. He later telephoned the girls and threatened to kill them if they told anyone.

Mr Campbell denies three rapes, two sexual assaults, five indecent assaults, one attempted indecent assault, two offences of false imprisonment and two burglaries.

Miss Laing said that Mr Campbell appeared to collapse and was taken to hospital after his arrest in October 2006. “As he lay in an examination room, he was heard by the officer standing guard to say, ‘Why did I do it?’” Subsequently, during extensive police interviews, he had denied all the offences. She said: “The Crown say the defendant is a serial sex offender. All the complainants remain deeply affected by the attacks to this day.”

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