Twenty-one years for rapist who humiliated victims in court

A rapist, whose actions led to Government promises to change the law after he humiliated his victims in court, was told he would have to serve a total of 21 years in jail for a series of vicious attacks.. Steve Boggan and Melvyn Howe report.

Milton Brown caused public outrage last year when he made two sex-attack victims re-live their ordeals in the witness box - apparently for nothing more than his own pleasure.

The legal system gave him the right to conduct his own defence and, despite obvious anxiety, the trial judge was powerless in the face of a man who took his rights and abused them as much as his victims.

He could not be named at the time to avoid prejudicing a second case, involving the repeated savage beating of a girlfriend, Susan McDonald, 29, whom he imprisoned for five days without medical help with a festering stab wound and multiple breaks and fractures.

But yesterday, Judge Leo Charles QC, sitting at Knightsbridge Crown Court, west London, sentenced the former mechanic to five years in prison for the attacks on Miss McDonald, who suffered multiple broken ribs, a broken arm and injuries all over her body after being hit by Brown, 44, with bottles, a pool cue and wood encrusted with nails.

That was added on to the 16 years he was already facing for two other sex attacks in 1996. Only at the end of yesterday's proceedings could it be revealed that he also has a total of 58 convictions for violence, dishonesty and sexual offences, including child molestation.

As Brown screamed and yelled that he had been convicted by a "kangaroo court", and while the jury sat shaking their heads, having found him guilty of the attack on Miss McDonald only by majority verdict, the judge went on: "The public is in need of protection from you because you showed just how dangerous you are and just how much very serious harm you cause to other people when you are at large." Brown's spree of violence began early in 1996 when he befriended a 38-year-old mother of three who had just arrived in London. She met Brown and accepted his offer of accommodation, which turned into a 15-hour rape ordeal.

After beginning a relationship with Miss McDonald in May 1996, he became obsessive and began accusing her of seeing other men. He beat her over and over again and locked her in his flat in Camberwell, south east London, taking her out in a wig and dark glasses only to hobble to a soup kitchen.

During one of these visits, she escaped when he was distracted by a 31-year-old graduate, who was drunk, having been celebrating an exam success. While Miss McDonald limped away, the graduate was sexually assaulted at knifepoint.

During last year's trial, he spent days cross examining the women. The rape victim had to give evidence twice after the jury was discharged following a violent exchange between Brown and the judge, Timothy Pontius.

"Do I have to put up with this?" one of the women asked the judge. "I have never been so humiliated in my life."

After jailing Brown for 16 years, Judge Pontius said it was "highly regrettable" that the law allowed a defendant "to question his victims in needlessly extended and agonising detail for the obvious purpose of intimidation and humiliation".

Tony Blair and Jack Straw, the Home Secretary, have said they want to end an offenders' right to commit "second rape" in court. And last month, Lord Irvine of Lairg, the Lord Chancellor, told The Independent that judges would be given more powers to intervene in cross-examinations, conducting it themselves in cases where alleged rapists appeared to be humiliating their victims.

The Home Office said yesterday that proposed changes could be put forward as soon as the spring. It is understood the main obstacle will be in complying with the European Convention on Human Rights, which gives defendants the right to represent themselves.