Cat-flap sex attacker who struck weeks after release from jail gets life

A convicted paedophile was given two life sentences yesterday after subjecting a woman to a horrific sexual assault only three weeks after being released from prison.

A convicted paedophile was given two life sentences yesterday after subjecting a woman to a horrific sexual assault only three weeks after being released from prison.

Paul Robson, 35, entered through a cat flap at the home of a 23-year-old woman, where she was asleep alone, and attacked her while holding a knife at her throat.

Robson, who has a long history of violent sex attacks on women and young girls, was described by a judge at Oxford Crown Court as a "menace to females". He had been in and out of prison for the past 16 years after attacks against adult women and girls as young as eight, the court heard.

The case will strengthen calls for the greater use of automatic life sentences for sex offenders, an idea proposed by William Hague, the Conservative party leader, and backed last weekend by John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister.

Robson, from Newcastle upon Tyne, who had been living in a bail hostel after his release from prison, admitted two charges of attempted rape and two of indecent assault.

Judge Harold Wilson said heshould not be eligible for parole for at least nine years. He said: "You have destroyed or seriously damaged the lives of children and women by subjecting them to degrading sexual humiliations from which ordinary decent people recoil. The time has come when the community must be properly protected from you and this requires that you be imprisoned for life."

He gave Robson two life sentences for attempted rape and eight years for each offence of indecent assault.

Judge Wilson added: "You must go to prison and stay there for so long as you remain likely to offend again, or until you are so enfeebled by age that you no longer constitute any threat to women and children."

The court had heard that after breaking into his victim's house in March, Robson bound her hands behind her back, placed a pillow case over her head and subjected her to prolonged sexual assaults, while holding a knife at her throat and repeatedly threatening to kill her. Joan Butler QC, for the prosecution, said the woman had "suffered an ordeal that was the stuff of nightmares".

Robson was arrested the following day on a canal bank in Oxfordshire. DNA evidence linked him to the attack and he eventually confessed.

Jonathan Rose, for the defence, said Robson's attacks on women resulted from his having been the victim of abuse as a child. The court heard that for the past 16 years Robson had been in and out of prison and had become "institutionalised".

He added: "The defendant recognises that he is not a normal person, and that he is full of anger and totally unable to cope with life on the outside."

In 1988 at Lancaster Crown Court he was jailed for 42 months for assaulting a 12-year-old girl in the town after threatening her with a knife.

He was released in 1990, but three months later he abducted and assaulted an eight-year-old girl in Morecambe, for which he was jailed for eight years at Preston Crown Court. After serving five years of the sentence, he moved to Reading, Berkshire, where he attacked a 31-year-old woman, dragging her off the street as she walked with her young sister - for which, in June 1996, he was jailed for five years.