 I came to the police station in 2003 and told the officers I was innocent. They didn't believe me. I came to the Crown Court in Manchester in 2004 and told the jury I was innocent. They didn't believe me. I came to this appeal board in 2006 and told them I was innocent. They didn't believe me. I applied to the Criminal Cases Review Commission, which is supposed to investigate miscarriages of justice, and tell them I was innocent. They didn't investigate and they didn't believe me. Not once, but twice. Today we told this court I was innocent and finally they listened. But I have been innocent all along. For each of those 20 years that came before today, nothing, any police officer, court or commission, said about me since 2003, changed that reality. You are here to gather news. That declaration from the bench in there behind me is not news to me. When a jury finds you guilty when you are innocent, reality does not change. You know you did not commit to crime, but all the people around you start living in a false fantasy universe and treat you as if you were guilty. The police, prison officers, probation, prisoners, journalists, judges. As a minority of one, you are forced to live their false fantasy. The second of August 2003 I was kidnapped by the state. It has taken nearly 20 years to persuade my kidnappers to let me go. 17 years, 4 months and 16 days of that time were spent in prison. At every parole hearing I sat before a panel who shook their heads at me considering me to be dangerous. And all that time the real perpetrator, the real dangerous person was free. More recently I was allowed to leave prison, but with my name on the sex offenders register and on the tight supervision by police and probation, I was not free. And now I have finally been exonerated. I am left outside this court without an apology, without an explanation, jobless, homeless, expected to simply slip back into the world with no acknowledgement of the gaping black hole that they opened up in my life. A black hole that looms so large behind me, even here today, that I fear it will swallow me up. That black hole is hard for a person who has never slept a night behind bars to conceive of. People convicted of rape are the lowest of the low. I did not commit the crime that I was treated as if I did. I spent 17 years on my guard against every threat. 17 years counting down the minutes to lock up, so I could be behind my door and safe from other prisoners, but not safe from my own mind. Imagining I would die there, perhaps murdered in the kitchen by a prisoner, a fellow prisoner. All left to die of hypoglycemia in myself tonight. Or being driven insane by the system and dying at my own hand. But somehow I lived. Told every day that I was a liar, I sought the uncomplicated truths of science and mathematics through the Open University. Told every day that I was a violent monster, I sought tiny respites through Buddhism and meditation. Told that I was in denial about my offending behaviour. I read everything I could about a justice system that was in denial about its mistakes. Since I was arrested in 2003, the police, the prison system and probation service have been calling me a liar, because I denied that I committed the crime. They claimed I was in denial and made me serve an extra 10 more years in prison because I would not make a false confession. I am not a liar. I am not in denial. But I will tell you who is. Greater Manchester Police are liars. And they are in denial. Even after this judgement today, I predict we will see them denying responsibility for what happened. We will see them stretching credulity with their excuse-making. Greater Manchester Police have been scrambling to cover up how they wrongfully convicted me for 20 years. Rather than investigate the multiple leads they were given by the public, they made a horribly traumatised woman look at a line-up with me in it, even though I didn't match the description she had given of her attacker. They exploited a hopeless heroine addict and his girlfriend, both with dishonesty convictions having them tell the jury they identified me. They unlawfully withheld crucial evidence which would have helped my defence. Once I began appealing, the police unlawfully destroyed the victim's clothing that I was demanding we retested along with other evidence, not just once, but three times. And all this time, the person who really did this horrific crime has been at large. And this means that it's not just me who has been denied justice. This is the victim. As this is my only chance to say something to her, please allow me to address her directly. Sitting in my cell, I used to rut my brains as to how you could say you were so sure it was me when I knew it was not. I read all I could and learned about how fraught with risk the process of line-up identification is when someone has been subjected to trauma. I wondered if the police helped you to pin me. Since my release, I have had the privilege of being introduced to an American woman called Jennifer Thompson, a rape survivor who was caught up in a wrongful conviction. She has helped me at least begin to try to understand what you went through that night and what it has been like for you since. I am so sorry that you were attacked and brutalised that night by that man. I am not the person who attacked you. But what happened to me is not your fault. I am so sorry if my fight for the truth, as I knew it to be, has caused you extra trauma. I am so sorry that the system has let you down. Take letters both down. There are no winners in a wrongful conviction case with the exception of the real perpetrator. Everyone gets failed from the original victim to the wrongfully convicted person. I sincerely hope that you are receiving the support you need on the apology from the police that you deserve. Thank you. No questions, she's got a prepared statement and we are asked to help read it. I am the proud mother of this brave, gentle, decent man. I have always known he did not do this horrible crime. The first time I got to talk to him after his arrest he said, when they test the DNA they will know I am innocent and he's been saying this same thing ever since. For nearly 20 years people have assumed that I was just a loyal and committed mother in denial about what my son was capable of doing. I knew the system had got it wrong but it seemed like there was nothing I could do about it. As a mother, not being able to help your child when they are in desperate need is the most painful experience you can have. When Andy was convicted in 2004, to me it was just like someone pushed me into an abyss and I was just falling. No one could hear me crying out for help. I couldn't see the bottom of this abyss. It was just black. No one was listening to me. I was in that much shock. I actually lost my voice. I couldn't speak. And then as the months grew into years I was just hoping that someone would hear us. I'd throw us a line. A rope to climb back up out of this dark pit. The ropes were dangles and then pulled back up again before we could get to them. Finally, we found a rope we could reach and that was the people at the Lord Charity of Peel. It was them who saved my son. Not this call or the commission or the system. And now Andy's name has been cleared. Suddenly in the public eye I am no longer a deluged mother. My son is no longer a monster. But what has been done to him cannot be undone. The damage will be with him for the rest of his life. And the woman who got attacked has been denied justice just as my son was. Like any parent would, what I want for Andy is a full accounting of how this happened. And for the people responsible for my son's wrongful conviction to be brought to justice alongside the man responsible for this brutal attack. I'm the solicitor representing Andy Malpinson and I'm the director of the Law Practice and Charity of Peel. This case represents a double injustice that must never be repeated. Let's be absolutely clear about what has happened here. Greater Manchester Police caused an innocent man to be wrongfully imprisoned for over 17 years. They then withheld crucial evidence denying Andy a fair trial and unlawfully destroyed key exhibits nearly denying the DNA test results that have established his innocence beyond any doubt today. Greater Manchester Police also utterly let down the victim of this brutal crime. Their deeply flawed investigation failed to bring to justice her real attacker compromising public safety in the process. The public deserves better. The police must face full accountability for their actions. We, of course, welcome today's ruling overturning Andy's wrongful conviction. But the question which should trouble everyone is why did it take nearly 20 years to get here? The truth is this case, Andy's case, is an indictment of both the Court of Appeal and the Criminal Cases Review Commission. These so-called safety nets in our justice system missed three earlier opportunities with this obvious miscarriage of justice right. Faced with compelling DNA evidence proving Andy's innocence, the Court of Appeal had no choice today but to finally throw out his conviction. They're considering the other issues in the case that relate to the disclosure failures by the Greater Manchester Police and will issue a judgement on those in the near future. Our message to parliamentarians is this, reform these institutions, make them transparent, make them accountable, force them to apologise and to learn lessons from Andy's case. Otherwise, we will see more wrongful convictions, more trauma and more justice denied. And it's not enough to say just learn lessons. This, we must have zero tolerance for any future wrongful convictions. This is an event that should never be permitted to be repeated. Appeal, people standing here, is a small legal charity. We spent thousands of hours on this case and most of those hours were spent by James Burley, who is Andy's investigator. Only a tiny fraction of that work was funded by Legal Aid. We commissioned DNA testing, we interviewed witnesses, we took the police to court in a judicial review twice to get disclosure of the evidence that this Court had heard today. We were only able to do this work with the support of our generous supporters. I want to especially thank all those who have donated their time or their money to appeal our charity and to Andy's case. And in particular, that would be Ed Henry, King's Council, Junior Council Max Hardy and the Pro Bono staff who have put in hundreds of hours at the law firms Ropes and Bray, Latham and Watkins, Mishon Durea and Morrison Borsley. We're now going to take a couple of questions. James and I, but not Andy, and Andy will be doing it more later. Any questions, please? Two or three. What are the chances of compensation? The compensation regime in this country is completely backward. You are required to prove your innocence to the regime in order to be compensated. It will be years before Andy receives anything in that regard. And I will say, actually, I consider compensation in this context to be a dirty word. You cannot compensate, Andy, for what he's been through. How much would you have to be paid to spend 17 years in prison with a conviction like this? You wouldn't do it. There is no amount of money that could compensate Andy Malkinson for what he's been through. So let's not call it compensation. Let's call it support to rebuild his shattered life. Could you elaborate briefly on the destruction of some of the evidence that you want the DNA from? Yes. So on three separate occasions, Great Manchester Police unlawfully destroyed evidence in this case. We don't have a full record of what they destroyed. But amongst the items that they destroyed, were items of victims' clothing. In a case like this, where they knew a man was trying to prove his innocence, and they knew that there'd be advances in DNA testing, that very nearly denied Andy the chance to have this hearing here today to prove his innocence. Unfortunately, a separate body, the forensic archive, had kept samples from those clothing items, which allowed the new testing to take place. But this is the other scandalous thing. It's not just that Andy was wrongly convicted. He very nearly was denied the opportunity to prove his innocence because of unlawful behaviour by GMB. One last question and we'll be gone. We're done. Thank you. I've seen that. That hasn't actually arrived. So here at Great Manchester Police offering an apology now. Afterwards. We have not seen that until today. And Great Manchester Police are offering us an apology. You go talk to them about that. On you go. Come this way. Too little too late.