Sex attack kidnapper jailed for 20 years

A SEX attacker was jailed for 20 years yesterday for kidnapping a fashion buyer, 'dreadfully' abusing her and then trying to kill and burn her.

The 27-year-old woman - who faces plastic surgery and is mentally scarred by her ordeal - hugged John Nutting, the barrister for the prosecution, after the Old Bailey jury unanimously found Anthony Ferrira guilty of attempted murder, kidnap and indecent assault.

She said later she thought Ferrira 'should never be allowed out to do this to anyone else. I do not think there could be a high enough sentence. I thought I was definitely going to die.'

Her injuries were so bad she needed 100 stitches and lost nearly half her blood, the court had been told. Judge Richard Lowry told Ferrira: 'It was almost a miracle she was not killed on the spot.'

The woman, a buyer with a major chain store, feigned death to save herself after she was snatched at knifepoint from a south London street and taken to a 'squalid' bedsit near by.

She had been on her way to work. Once inside the room, Ferrira started strangling her with her own scarf. As she gasped 'Why me?' Ferrira told her: 'Because you are pretty and I would never get a woman like you.'

In the ordeal the woman suffered 'the most dreadful series of indecent assaults', Mr Nutting told the court. Ferrira then started throttling the woman again, stabbed her in the throat and neck and struck her with a bottle.

Ferrira, 27, unemployed, of Streatham, south London, had denied he was responsible for the attack in February last year. After the attack he set fire to the bed, then locked the door as he fled. But the woman managed to get up and a passer-by heard her cries.

Judge Lowry said: 'She is a woman of great courage and a strong personality and this, one hopes, has helped her face her injuries and the consequences of that dreadful ordeal.'

(Photograph omitted)