Railway worker gets seven life sentences for M25 rapes

A railway worker was jailed for life yesterday for a series of rapes in the South-east on victims as young as 10.

A railway worker was jailed for life yesterday for a series of rapes in the South-east on victims as young as 10.

Antoni Imiela, 49, raped seven women and girls aged between 10 and 52 in Kent, Surrey, London and Hertfordshire during a 12-month period.

The attacks were marked by their callousness - in one assault he telephoned the mother of the victim to boast about raping her daughter.

On 21 November 2002, 11 days before his arrest, he kidnapped a girl aged 10 in Birmingham and sexually assaulted her in what was described as "a final act of defiance".

Despite taking great care not to leave any evidence that could be analysed by forensic scientists he was captured after tiny traces of his DNA were found on several of his victims, although it took a year before police could identify him.

Imiela, from Appledore, near Ashford, Kent, was jailed in 1988 for 14 years for a series of armed robberies in the North-east. He was released from prison after eight years. But because he was convicted before 1995, when the national DNA database was set up, his genetic fingerprints were not logged.

The railway supervisor is thought to have carried out other sex attacks which were not reported and the police expect to receive further complaints from alleged victims.

After he was found guilty yesterday at Maidstone Crown Court, Mr Justice John Owen gave him seven life sentences for each of the rapes.

He also sentenced Imiela, known as the M25 rapist, to 29 years for the kidnap, attempted rape and indecent assault of the 10-year-old. The jury could not agree a verdict for two further counts of rape. The prosecution also withdrew a charge of raping a 12-year-old girl because of concern about the impact of the court case on the victim.

The judge told Imiela: "You are a ruthless sexual predator who carefully selected where you could strike at your victims, overwhelming them with force or threats to kill, dragging them under the cover of undergrowth. Most thought they would die in your hands, four of your victims were young girls, two aged 10, a 13-year-old and a 14-year-old. You subjected them to humiliating and degrading sexual acts culminating in rape."

The judge reminded the court that Imiela had stolen a victim's mobile telephone to taunt her mother. He said Imiela had insisted in court that he was innocent, as only "a beast" could have carried out the callous attacks. "You were accurate in your description but you were describing yourself," the judge said.

The families of some of the victims burst into tears and hugged each other as Imiela was convicted.

His rapes and sex assaults carried out between November 2001 and November 2002 provoked one of the biggest man hunt since the investigation into Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, who was sentenced to life in 1981 for 13 murders and seven attempted murders.

Imiela's first victim was a girl aged 10 who was outside a police-run youth club in Ashford, Kent. He dragged her down a muddy path and raped her despite her pleas that she was only 10. The media called him the "trophy rapist" because of the way he stole items of clothing from his victims.

The jury heard that there was a one in a billion chance that DNA found in a sample taken from the girl raped in Ashford was not from Imiela, and a one in 114 million chance that DNA on a 30-year-old victim was left by someone other than the railway worker.

More than 3,200 men gave police DNA samples during the hunt for Imiela, codenamed Operation Orb, but he never entered the frame because he was not on the national DNA database. It was only after an anonymous tip-off following a television appeal that police took his DNA in November 2002 and were able to match it with samples from victims. Imiela claimed during his trial that he had been "fitted up" by police.

Imiela, the son of a Polish refugee, left his West German birthplace for Worthing, West Sussex, at the age of seven.

The following year the family moved to Co Durham where Imiela, who spoke little English, was bullied at school, and taunted as a "Nazi bastard".

At home Imiela and his older brother, Andy, were beaten by their father, Antoni Snr. At the age of 15 his mother left.

Imiela committed burglaries as a teenager, and at the age of 17 he was sent to Borstal for offences involving firearms.

When he arrived in Appledore in the late Nineties, he had just completed an eight-year prison sentence. In the late 1980s, Imiela committed several armed robberies, threatening to blow shoppers' heads off and clubbing one elderly man over the head.

But although his use of prostitutes and his violent nature may have indicated that he was capable of rape, criminal profilers say it is unclear why a man with no previous record of sex offences suddenly embarked on a series of attacks.

The cruel nature of the rapes led profilers to assume that they were looking for a serial attacker who had a history of sex offences.