Sister of man wrongly jailed for 17 years over a brutal rape he didn't commit reveals how she's wracked with guilt after disowning him when he was convicted

The sister of a man wrongly convicted for a rape he didn't commit has revealed her guilt after she disowned him while he languished in prison for 17 years.

Andrew Malkinson was imprisoned after a jury convicted him of a brutal rape which left a 33-year-old woman near death's door in Little Hulton, Salford, in 2003.

Despite a lack of DNA evidence linking him to the crime and key details about him not lining up with the victim's description of her rapist, Andrew was charged and sentenced to life behind bars.

He would spend the next 17 years - more than a decade beyond his minimum terms of six-and-a-half years - in prison as he maintained his innocence. 

For his sister Sarah, however, the potential baggage that came with her younger brother's conviction, along with the thought that he might have committed the horrific crime, was too much to bear.

While their mother Tricia continued to fight to prove Andrew's innocence, Sarah - who hadn't seen him in ten years before the court case - kept her distance fearful that the jury had got it right.

Speaking to filmmakers for a new BBC2 documentary, The Wrong Man: 17 Years Behind Bars, she said, as first reported by The Sun: 'My brother had been convicted and you kind of like believe that he must be this person that they are saying he is.

'As much as I don't really want to say this, but I am going to say it, like I didn't want anything to do with them. Which affected me. Because it's like, 'I don't want anything to do with him.' I did that.

'My mindset was, I don't want anything to do with him because how can he do that to a woman?'

She added that she was 'really, really scared' that people would find out she was related to a man who had been jailed for such a barbaric crime.

Sarah said: 'I've got a child, I've got a roof to put over my kid's head. And I didn't want people to know that that was my brother. Andrew found out he had a different dad at 16.

'He actually changed his name when he found his real dad.

'And I was so pleased that he had, because what would happen to me and my mum being on the estate?

'Would we be spat out in the street? Would we get windows put in for it? We wouldn't want to go out. You become a bit of a recluse.'

Sarah said that when they were growing up together her brother had been a 'kind, caring' boy who was always reading.

However, they had 'drifted apart' as they got older, with Andrew travelling around the UK and abroad, leaving Sarah wondering if the kind-hearted child she had spent her younger years with had changed.  

The news that he turned out to be innocent all along was a body blow for Sarah, who said that while she was happy her brother was free she was also wracked with guilt for not believing him.

In the documentary, she said: 'All the thoughts that you've got about your brother kind of disappeared.

'Because you know for definite that wasn't him that did it. I've got really bad guilt from it.

'It's really bad to think that my brother was meant to have done what he's done. And I believed that [he was], as much as I didn't want to believe that it was like he must have done it.

'I feel really bad about that.'

But there was no doubt in his mother's mind, with Tricia continuing to fight his corner as he languished behind bars. 

In the BBC documentary, she reflects on the fateful day in court saying: 'It was like I'd been pushed in an abyss. I know that Andrew didn't do that. It didn't enter my head that he would be found guilty.'

She adds: 'I didn't speak about it to people. Because the reaction is well, you will believe them because you're his mother.

'It's smarter to save your breath and put it to better use. I spent half my life in the library because I didn't have a computer then.

'I was in the library, that often was my second home. The information that I've gathered, and I had it printed out and sent to Andrew, when you take it on your own, and you're not a legal person, it's very hard.'

Andrew was 37 when he was wrongly charged with the rape of a mother-of-two.

He fought for 20 years until the court finally overturned his conviction after forensic testing linked another man to the attack.

He was finally acquitted by the Court of Appeal on July 25 last year.

Following the judgement, he said: 'On August 2, 2003, I was kidnapped by the State. It has taken nearly 20 years to persuade my kidnappers to let me go. 

'Seventeen years, four months and 16 days of that time was spent in prison. All that time the real perpetrator, the real dangerous person, was free.

'Now I am left outside this court without an apology, without an explanation, jobless, homeless, expected to simply slip back into the world.

'I spent 17 years on my guard against every threat. I imagined I would die in prison, murdered by another prisoner. I am not a liar. I am not in denial. Greater Manchester Police are liars and they are in denial.'

Last month, the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) offered Mr Malkinson an unreserved apology following an independent review into the handling of the case.

'The CCRC's delay in apologising to me added significantly to the mental turmoil I am experiencing as I continue to fight for accountability for what was done to me,' Mr Malkinson said.

'The CCRC's failings caused me a world of pain. Even the police apologised straight away. It feels like Helen Pitcher is only apologising now because the CCRC has been found out, and the last escape hatch has now closed on them.'

A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: 'The Lord Chancellor has been clear Andrew Malkinson suffered an atrocious miscarriage of justice and he deserves thorough and honest answers as to how and why it took so long to uncover.

'The Criminal Cases Review Commission, Crown Prosecution Service and Greater Manchester Police have all pledged their full cooperation to the independent inquiry into the handling of his conviction and subsequent appeals.'

The Wrong Man: 17 Years Behind Bars is on BBC2 on June 6 at 9pm