Andrew Malkinson talks about being wrongly convicted

Andrew Malkinson spoke to GMB yesterday of the “unspeakable pain” Greater Manchester Police has caused him after he was wrongly convicted of rape and spent 17 years behind bars.

Asked by reporter Liz Summers whether he would take up an offer to meet with the Assistant Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police, who has offered to personally apologise, Andrew said: “Right now, I don’t feel like that at all. 

“I don’t feel like meeting anybody from that institution. They have caused me unspeakable pain and misery, oceans of pain, and the idea of them apologising is very hollow.”

As the new revelation, that he may be forced to stump up costs for his prison accommodation and food came to light, he described what had happened as “totally catastrophic.”

Welling with emotion, Andrew added: “I once had hopes and dreams. Then it [the conviction] just happened. It’s like being caught in a tsunami, I suppose. 

“You know, I saw the 2004 tsunami on the TV in prison soon after I was convicted and that’s how it felt.”

Calling for change he added: “You’re a small piece of detritus that gets dragged by immense forces. The state wields immense power. It needs to be tempered. And I was just dragged, plucked from my existence, into a world of living hell. It’s difficult to make that understood.”

He also said: “It’s been hard to cope with. Although I won, finally, they still stole all of those years from me and filled it with misery and joylessness – no happiness. It’s a black hole.”

Even the joy of finding love, and becoming a dad, had been taken from him.

“And obviously [in prison] no relationships. You know, I couldn’t have a family. Who knows, you can never predict how your life might have gone had it not been hijacked.  I could have met the woman of my dreams. I could have had a family. I always wanted to have a daughter at some point, but I don’t think that’s ever gonna happen now.”

Andrew was jailed in 2004 for a brutal attack on a woman in Salford, Manchester, England. Yet DNA evidence that could have freed him had been sitting on a police database since 2012. Recent advances have now linked a 48-year-old man to the crime. He is expected to be charged.

He served the majority of his sentence at HMP Frankland, Co Durham, home to some of Britain’s most dangerous inmates, including Wayne Couzens, who murdered Sarah Everard.

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