A serial sex offender who strangled a woman unconscious and raped her has finally been jailed after an innocent suspect spent 17 years in prison.In one of Britain’s worst ever miscarriages of justice, Andrew Malkinson was wrongly convicted of raping the young mother on a motorway embankment in 2003.Her attacker was in fact Paul Quinn, a hard-drinking, divorced father of five, who claims to have had consensual sex with hundreds of women as a young man.The fence erector, 52, was found guilty of rape, strangulation and grievous bodily harm at a trial in April.Handing him a jail sentence of 24 years at Manchester Crown Court, Judge Mr Justice Bright said the victim was a 'hero', and that it must have been 'excruciating' for her to go through the courts twice.He noted that Quinn had viewed an online news article from 2004 about Mr Malkinson’s conviction, which demonstrated he was aware of the harm he had caused the woman and Mr Malkinson.'Neither of these things appears to have troubled you at any point during the 20-plus years that have passed,' he said.'It is utterly clear that you knew throughout that another man had been arrested, charged, convicted and imprisoned. You knew that his conviction was wrongful.'The victim, who was left permanently disfigured by the attack, described how she ‘lives in constant fear that someone is behind me’.The rape took place in the early hours of Saturday, July 19, 2003, as she walked home through Salford, Greater Manchester.She heard ‘footsteps’, she told the jury in the original trial, then to her terror ‘felt this force from behind’.Tearfully, she told how she desperately tried to fight off her attacker as he strangled her. Quinn (pictured during his police interviews) told detectives he could not possibly recall all the hundreds of women he claimed to have slept with - but in court said the rape victim was not one of them From left: A custody image of Andrew Malkinson after his arrest in 2003, an e-fit image created of the attacker based on the victim's description, and an image of Paul Quinn taken in 2005 In 2023, new analysis of DNA taken from the victim’s clothing provided a one-in-a-billion match to a sample given by Quinn over a decade earlierBefore losing consciousness, she scratched his face with such force that it caused the nail on the middle finger of her left hand to snap off.She suffered a fractured cheekbone, a swollen eye, and one of her nipples was partially severed by a bite.In a victim impact statement read before the court today, she said: ‘Someone has had 17 years robbed as a result of this case and that stays with me.‘As for me, the impact of what happened will remain with me for life. Every day I look at my face and see the scarring. It is a permanent reminder of that night.In 2023, new analysis of DNA taken from the victim’s clothing provided a one-in-a-billion match to a sample given by Quinn over a decade earlier.However the trial has left police and prosecutors facing questions as to why mounting doubts about Mr Malkinson's conviction were not acted on sooner. Andrew Malkinson had his conviction quashed in 2023 after years protesting his innocence Rapist Paul Quinn spent 23 years enjoying his freedom, becoming a grandfather, splitting from his wife, moving to Devon and starting a new relationshipAfter his conviction, it was revealed that Quinn previously committed an indecent assault when he was just 12 years old.Four years later, when he was 16, Quinn was convicted of two counts of unlawful sexual intercourse with a 12-year-old girl.Then at the age of 19 he was convicted of arson after setting fire to a wheelie bin outside the home of an ex-girlfriend while her two children were inside, receiving a two-year sentence.His other convictions from the 1990s include causing actual bodily harm, burglary and trespassing with a loaded air gun.Jurors were not told that the reason Quinn’s DNA came to be sampled in 2012 was as part of a national police operation targeting convicted sex offenders.A series of blunders meant it was not matched to samples taken from the rape victim for another decade.And while Mr Malkinson, now 60, endured a nightmarish incarceration, Quinn became a grandfather, split from his wife, moved to Devon and started a new relationship.An independent judge-led inquiry will now examine why it has taken so long to unmask the real attacker.Detectives now suspect Quinn - a 'very dangerous man' who was ‘probably hanging around waiting to see a lone female’ - may be responsible for other unsolved sex offences that took place during his years living in Salford.