'Lift rapist' jailed

A serial sex attacker - thrown out of Australia because of his crimes - was convicted at the Old Bailey today of raping a backpacker after his return to the UK.

British born Edward Godfrey deliberately chose a young Australian tourist in London to be his latest victim, the Old Bailey heard.

He lured the 22-year-old to his north London flat and forced her to assume pornographic poses as he raped and assaulted her.

She had regarded him as a father figure who had helped her after she broke up with her English boyfriend.

The backpacker had no idea that 42-year-old tattoo artist Godfrey had been thrown out by the Australian authorities after serving most of his adult life in jail for sex crimes.

He had left his Hertfordshire home with his parents when he was 10 but had never taken out Australian citizenship. Britain could do nothing to stop the dangerous expatriate returning to his homeland.

The Australian authorities recognised he was a danger to women when they ordered his deportation - as did Godfrey himself.

He told the Australian Appeals Tribunal "I'd be lying if I said I was not a threat."

Duncan Chappell, deputy president of the Tribunal, said: "The very nature of his crimes, as well as the risk of reoffending, are such that the tribunal has no alternative but to reaffirm the order for his deportation."

Godfrey, dubbed the "Lift Rapist", had been jailed in Australia for raping a woman in Surfers Paradise, Queensland in 1983 and indecently assaulting women in car parks in Sydney in 1996.

"The tribunal is conscious it is also putting at potential risk women in another country to which Mr Godfrey is to be returned," the hearing noted.

Godfrey, from Enfield, north London denied two charges of indecent assault and one charge of rape.

He was convicted on all charges and is due to be sentenced later.