Rapist Joseph McCann was freed to attack 11 victims in rape rampage after major failings by ‘unstable’ probation team
A MONSTER was freed to attack 11 victim in a rape rampage after major failings by an "unstable" and inexperienced probation staff, a damning report has found.
Depraved Joseph McCann, 34, wore wigs, told victims he loved them and claimed they were part of a "gypsy initiation ritual" during the rampage.
But he was released despite writing graphic letters containing threats of sexual violence and revealing his desire for "a clean young girl" on release from jail
He had mistakenly been freed automatically half-way through a three-year sentence for burglary and theft in February last year.
A damning report today found he was freed to carry out the rape spree after "major failings" by a team of "unstable" and inexperienced probation staff.
The first of two reports from Chief Inspector of Probation Justin Russell revealed a string of missed opportunities to stop the sicko.
McCann's victims are now suing the Probation Service for £1million compensation.
During his initial time in jail for theft, McCann was found to be writing "graphic and detailed letters" to his family.
It has emerged for the first time the notes included "threats of sexual violence and referred to wanting a 'clean young girl' on release".
Why was he free to carry out attacks?
In 2008, McCann had been ordered to serve a sentence of Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) when he burgled the home of an 85-year-old man and threatened to stab him.
This meant after a minimum term of two-and-a-half years he'd be freed from jail only when the Parole Board decided it was safe to do so.
He was out licence from prison when he was arrested in August last year for burglary and should have been recalled to jail - allowing the Parole Board to be informed by the Probation Service about the case.
But he was instead remanded into custody and then given a three-year determinate sentence, which did not take into account his earlier offending.
And like London Bridge terrorist Usman Khan, McCann was then automatically freed to carry out further crimes.
Following his arrest in May, the Ministry of Justice carried out a serious further offence review into McCann's case.
The review is understood to have identified an error in the probation service failing to recall McCann when he committed the burglary.
Of four probation staff in the South East and Eastern division who were directly involved in McCann's supervision, one was demoted, according to PA.
Jo Farrar, chief executive of HM Prisons and Probation Service, has “apologised unreservedly” for failings in the case.
In 2013, more than once the fiend "with the collusion of his family, attempted to hunt down a schoolgirl victim for his twisted fantasies".
But the report found this was not shared with the probation service and as a result, wasn't part of any risk assessment on whether he should be released.
Once he was freed, McCann went on to abduct victims from the street and threatened some at knifepoint before brutally raping them for hours on end.
The brute was branded a "classic psychopath" when he was handed 33 life sentences in December.
As he was found guilty of 37 charges - including the rape of a child under 13, kidnap, and sexual assault concerning 11 alleged victims - harrowing blunders began to emerge.
Damning key findings in new report
Chief Inspector of Probation Justin Russell's report highlighted a string of failings:
- 'Graphic and detailed' prison letters - The monster wrote of wanting a 'clean young girl' when released and included threats of 'sexual violence. Police had intelligence from 2003 which accused McCann and a family member of being involved in the abuse and sexual exploitation of young teenage girls, which was flagged to his offender manager. In 2013, it was again flagged he was attempting to find a 'young girl' for his release but this was not shared with probation.
- Staff focused on burglary - The decision on whether to recall him was based more on his burglary offences and not "based on an analysis of his patterns of behaviour, including his most recent behaviour on licence." This would have "identified that his risk of serious harm had increased".
- Attempts to break out of prison - During his time in jail, McCann's behaviour was "poor" and he was involved in violence and intimidation, and he failed mandatory drug tests. He was transferred to a Category A prison following a planned escape attempt from HMP Wellingborough.
- Officials underestimated the risk he posed - Mr Russell found McCann's ability to manipulate staff was "underestimated".
- Staff failed to order any more mental health assessments after 2014 - The monster was subject of Multi Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA) upon his release in February last year and was classed as requiring "level 2" attention, where his case is deemed to require the involvement of several bodies and regular meetings. But he was downgraded to level one just 12 days after his release, classed as "ordinary management" just by his probation team. This took place "too soon" and a higher level was needed due to his "high risk of serious harm".
- "Inadequate" plan for his release from prison - McCann should have been sent to a bail hostel where he could be monitored but was instead allowed to live with family. This was after probation officers twice "tried, and failed" to get him a bed.
A probation service error two months before the rampage meant McCann was automatically freed from jail after serving his term instead of being recalled to prison.
And the shocking new report has found officials were told McCann bore the gruesome hallmarks of a sex offender in 2011.
But despite the chilling warning, probation officers missed EIGHT chances to keep him behind bars.
Over the space of 11 years, the serial offender had THREE different probation officers responsible for his case in the months leading up to his prison release in February.
He had even been seen by one in April just days before he carried out the first rape.
But the inexperienced team failed to see the danger McCann posed and he embarked on a grisly rape spree across the UK.
Mr Russell said: "McCann was managed by an unstable team, lacking experienced and skilled practitioners. They suffered from poor management oversight, high workloads, poor performance and high staff turnover."
The creep had a "long history of serious offending" and breaching court orders, he said, adding: "There were signs that he posed an increasing risk to the public. There was evidence of his potential for sexual offending."
But crucial information, recorded on different systems by various authorities, was "lost" in handovers between staff, Mr Russell said.
Even more appalling, prison staff didn't share information about the risk McCann posed with probation - meaning there was not a "clear picture" of the monster they were dealing with.
The report also found staff did not give McCann a bed in a bail hostel where he would be monitored by probation after being released from jail.
Instead, he was allowed to live with family where he was not checked up on.
Timeline of terror
April 21 — Watford, Hertfordshire
4am: 21-year-old woman abducted outside Pryzm nightclub, driven to her home and raped in her own bed.
April 25 — Walthamstow, London
12.30am: A woman aged 25 is abducted while walking home from the Tube and subjected to 14-hour ordeal.
April 25 — Edgware, London
12.15pm: A 21-year-old woman is abducted but her sister, 18, escapes. The 21-year-old and 25-year-old earlier victim manage to escape in Watford.
May 5 — Haslingden, Lancashire
Early hours: A mother is tied up in her own home while her daughter, 17, and son, 11, are raped and sexually assaulted in the room next door.
May 5 — Ramsbottom, Greater Manchester
1.30pm: A 71-year-old woman loading her car with shopping at Morrisons is abducted and raped. She is still in the car when McCann strikes again.
May 5 — Heywood, Greater Manchester
3.30pm: A 13-year-old girl is kidnapped and sexually assaulted. She and the 71-year-old woman escape at Knutsford services shortly before 6pm.
May 5 — Congleton, Cheshire
6.30pm: Two 14-year-old girls are abducted in the Fiat Punto stolen from the 71-year-old woman.
During his two-week cocaine-fuelled reign of terror, one 17-year-old girl jumped naked from a first-floor window after fearing she would be trafficked abroad when McCann raped her and her 11-year-old brother.
The girl's mum was tied up with hair straighteners and forced to listen to the muffled screams of her children as the sicko raped them both.
McCann's gruesome rampage finally came to an end in May this year following a dramatic five-hour stand-off with cops after the fiend fled up a tree.
He then told police: "If you had caught me for the first two, the rest of this wouldn't have happened."
The rape spree began in the early hours of April 21 when he bundled a 21-year-old mum into his car at knifepoint as she walked home from a club in Watford.
They then drove to her home where McCann forced her in to her bedroom as her son slept next door and donned a wig as he raped her, saying: "It is normal, it is what they do in the traveller community."
Exclusive footage obtained by The Sun Online showed McCann pull into a BP garage in Watford just after 9am on April 21.
The young woman was in the passenger seat of his Ford Mondeo at the time.
She reported the attack to police and McCann's details were put on the Police National Computer and a prison recall was issued by Hertfordshire Police.
But three days later, he subjected a 25-year-old woman to a 14-hour horror ordeal after bundling her into a car when she left a station in Walthamstow.
'Scum of the Earth' - how the serial rapist was one of UK’s first ASBO yobs
SADISTIC serial rapist Joseph McCann was one of Britain's first ASBO yobs after terrorising locals by setting cars alight and shoplifting.
McCann, 34, was just 14 when he was slapped with the Anti-Social Behaviour Order alongside his brothers Michael and Sean.
The teen tearaways rampaged through the poverty-stricken Manchester estate they lived on - robbing terrified locals and setting cars alight.
Their campaign of terror on the gritty Beswick estate finally came to an end when they were banned from the area.
The brothers even went to the Court of Appeal to try and overturn the conditions of the ASBO - but top judges blocked their pleas.
Undettered, the feckless brood then moved to Aylesbury, Bucks, and Middlesex where they linked up with their traveller relatives.
McCann, who began dabbling in crime in 1998 when he was convicted of shoplifting, continued his yobbish behaviour in his new home.
The family "brought havoc" to Middlesex - with McCann and one of his brothers repeatedly stealing cars and setting them ablaze.
They soon became notorious on the estate - with locals too petrified to challenge the thug brothers.
McCann spent the years in and out of prison for a string of offences including theft and burglary.
In 2008, the beast burst into the home of an 85-year-old man and threatened to knife him in a brutal burglary in Bedford.
Despite being on an indeterminate sentence, McCann was released from prison in February automatically half-way through a three-year sentence.
The mistake meant he was able to embark on his grisly rampage between April 21 and May 5.
McCann's brother Sean, 32, killed himself in prison in 2016 while serving two years for assault.
He raped the terrified victim repeatedly and told her she would never escape him.
McCann then picked up a 21-year-old girl walking in Edgware with her younger sister - while keeping his second victim captive.
Her sibling managed to escape but she was dragged into the car and forced to perform sex acts on the second victim and was also raped several times by McCann.
She told the court: "He told me he had a knife and he was going to cut my throat and drown me."
The ordeal only ended when the 25-year-old smashed a vodka bottle over McCann's head when he tried to book them into the Phoenix Lodge hotel in Watford, Herts.
Police then publicly released details of the double kidnap and rape the next day and later issued CCTV.
McCann was finally named on April 30 - with cops offering a £20,000 reward for information after linking him to the attack in Watford.
But the serial sex attacker continued his chilling journey across the country - preying on the mum and her two children in Haslingden, Lancs, on May 5 after meeting her in a bar.
After tying up the mother, he pinned the daughter and 11-year-old down and sexually assaulted them - forcing the teenager to jump from a window and limp and to a relative's house with a fractured heel.
The girl, whose brother has been left so traumatised he is unable to speak, said: "Because it happened to me and my brother it has kind of ruined the family."
After the horror attack, McCann then made his way to Ramsbottom where he pounced on a 71-year old pensioner who had just finished loading her bags into her Fiat Punto at Morrisons.
He attacked her in a nearby industrial estate after telling her "so, we will have sex now" and then picked up a 13-year-old girl as the OAP drove him in her car on the same day.
He swigged from a bottle of sparkling wine as he told the girl he was in love with her before abusing her.
She said: "When I was in the car he tried to stab me in the leg with a pen. He kept saying that apparently I am going to go out with him, he asked me if I had a boyfriend."
They managed to escape when McCann pulled into Knutsford services on the M6 but the monster continued unfazed to Congleton, Cheshire, to continue his rampage.
McCann snatched two 14-year-old girls and threatened to "chop them up" a machete as he forced them into the Fiat.
But as he drove away he was spotted by a police patrol car and sped off with the two terrified girls screaming in the back seat.
Dashcam footage showed the fiend driving the wrong way on a roundabout and smashing into a Mercedes as he desperately tried to flee police.
After losing officers in a housing estate, McCann then abandoned the car with the two girls inside and was next picked up on CCTV running past a man cleaning a driveway and dashing through his garden.
He swapped his T-shirt with clothes drying on a washing line and hopped in a taxi from a restaurant in Stoke.
McCann then climbed up a tree as negotiators along with paramedics were deployed to the scene.
He was finally arrested at 2.36am - five hours after he was first spotted cowering among the leaves on a heat sensor.
McCann, of Harrow, North West London, refused to appear at his Old Bailey trial and didn't give evidence.
The court was told there was no motivation for his sickening crimes as McCann displayed such "contempt" for his victims he "enjoyed making them suffer".
McCann was convicted of 10 counts of false imprisonment, seven counts of rape, one count of rape of a child, two counts of causing or inciting a person to engage in sexual activity without consent and seven counts of kidnap.
He was also found guilty of one count of attempted kidnap, three counts of causing or inciting a child under 13 to engage in sexual activity, three counts of assault by penetration, one count of sexual assault and two counts of committing a sexual offence with intent.
The shocking number of victims makes McCann one of the UK's worst ever sex offenders - just behind Black Cab Rapist John Worboys.
He this year admitted a string of further offences relating to four more women - bringing his total to 16 - but cops fear he may have carried out more than 100 rapes and sexual assaults on women in London.
A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: "These were horrendous crimes and we have apologised to the victims for the unacceptable failings in this case.
"We have greatly improved information sharing between prisons and probation officers and all probation staff have received new, mandatory training on when offenders should be recalled.
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"We've also bolstered frontline staff, with 800 probation officers in training to help keep the public safe."