This is Devon -- A rapist has been jailed after being caught by new DNA techniques 30 years after he carried out a brutal sex attack on a teenage girl. Sam Robinson thought he had escaped justice for the 1984 rape but his victim was haunted by her ordeal and pleaded with police to reopen the cold case. Modern forensic science enabled experts to find traces of the attacker's DNA in tiny pieces of cloth worn by the 17-year-old victim on the night of the attack. Robinson was on the national DNA database and was tracked down by police after scientists found a perfect match. He was just 17 when he attacked the girl as she walked home through the grounds of Oldway Mansion in Paignton at midnight after having a row with her boyfriend. In the intervening years he moved away from Devon, was invalided out of the army, and moved to Southampton where he set up a new life as a respectable lecturer teaching marine technology to apprentices on college courses. His past finally caught up with him when he was found guilty of the attack almost 30 years after and jailed for 18 years. He was caught because he ended the victim's 40 minute ordeal by forcing her to have oral sex under threat of death. The traces ended up on her shirt from her hands and mouth when she put on her clothes as she ran home in terror. Robinson, 47, who lived at Higher Polsham Road at the time but now lives in Brookside, Totton, near Southampton, denied two counts of rape and one of indecent assault. He was found guilty of all counts and jailed for 18 years by Judge Francis Gilbert, QC. He told him: "In 1984 the police were unable to identify the attacker and closed the case. Much to her credit she had the courage to go to the police again in 2012 and ask then to reopen the case and use the DNA techniques now available. "As a result you were detected and a full DNA profile matched your profile on the data base. "This was an extremely violent incidence of rape and one of the worst I have seen in many years on the bar and as a Judge. "It was a prolonged sexual attack on a young woman who was forced to submit through violence and who was bleeding from the injuries to her head throughout the assault. These were repeated rapes aggravated by violence. "I wish to commend the victim for her exceptional courage and strength of mind which she demonstrated at the time and again as a witness in this case. "She gave a remarkable account of her awful ordeal and has described in her victim impact statement the very significant effects this has had on her. "She has my sympathy and I hope that her attacker being identified and sent to prison will bring her some solace and closure. "It is very interesting how DNA has become a useful and impressive tool in detecting crime even so many years after the original offence." During a week-long trial the court heard how the victim was a petite 17-year-old and Robinson a fit six-footer when he attacked her from behind and battered her around the head with a shoe. He forced her to go to a secluded area of gardens where he calmly ordered her to strip and raped her. He then told her to pick up her clothes and dragged her in a headlock naked through the grounds of the mansion to an ornamental garden where he raped her twice. His final act was to tell her that he would kill her unless he had oral sex with her and to force her into a painful and humiliating act which lasted five minutes. The victim was inspired to write to the police after reading of another trial in Plymouth in 2011 in which a cold case was solved by new DNA techniques. Robinson accepted the DNA was his but denied the rapes. He said his DNA may have come onto her clothes accidentally after he had been in the gardens earlier in the evening.
Reported by This is 9 hours ago.
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