They call this justice

3:50pm Thursday 26th April 2001

THE SICKENING rape of Alan's wife in a nursing home has shattered his family.

His wife Susan, in the late stages of a crippling terminal illness, will live with the scars of the attack for the rest of her fading life.

Alan, a former war correspondent, says his grown-up children remain distraught and are struggling to come to terms with the attack.

He also blames the rape for the death of his mother-in-law. She suffered a heart attack after reading a transcript of her daughter's evidence. Alan says she died of shock.

The BBC TV news presenter said: "My family are devastated because you don't expect a sick person in a nursing home to be attacked. I mean, that's the lowest of the low. My family has been devastated by events and I don't think my wife will ever, ever forget it. She's still quite aware of what's going on. Though desperately ill, she will be haunted by the rape for the rest of her days."

For Alan, who is approaching retirement age, this should be a time to look back and reflect on a brilliant career as an international reporter and award-winning journalist.

Instead he and his wife have had to deal with her terrible illness and a rape which he describes as the worst case of its type he has ever come across.

He said: "Having worked hard all our lives we should be at the age when we are able to relax and enjoy life. But she's got the illness which has destroyed the possibility of that and she's been attacked and left with the scars of that."

John Archibald, of Wapseys Wood caravan site, Gerrards Cross, carried out his sickening attack last February while visiting a friend at the nursing home which cannot be named for legal reasons. He was sentenced for the offence at Reading Crown Court last Friday.

His brother Mark Archibald, 28, reportedly made threats against Alan immediately after John was sentenced. Mark had to be escorted out of the building by court security staff.

John Archibald, a 29-year-old bare knuckle boxer, lured Susan, in her 50s, into a room with the offer of cigarettes before raping her on a bed. The offence came shortly after the victim had taken her medication and the cigarettes John Archibald gave her contained cannabis.

Susan spoke about her horrifying ordeal for the first time last November, to the Daily Mail, after John Archibald's conviction.

She said: "I was terrified that John Archibald would kill me. It was the worst thing that ever happened to me. I tried to fight but he was a strong man too strong for me. I also tried to scream: "Cut it out! Stop it!" but he took no notice. He then brutally raped me, twice: once with a condom, once without. I was out of my head with shock and in terrible pain as he had been so brutal."

In the run up to Archibald's sentencing, Alan and his wife were terrified that he might escape a prison sentence.

The courts had to wait for almost five months while reports, recommending a guardianship order rather than a custodial sentence, were drawn up for Archibald's defence team.

A guardianship order would have spared him from a prison sentence and put him in the care of social services in local authority or hostel accommodation.

In the end, Judge Mary Jane Mowat could not impose such an order because no care home was willing to take him.

Because he has served five months on remand, Archibald could be out of prison in just over a year.

Alan believes his wife has been badly let down by the legal system.

He explained: "It's absolutely ludicrous. The situation in this country is completely on its head. There has been so much effort and time wasted on this criminal and very little attention paid to the victim.

"He's had all this attention meanwhile my wife remains in the nursing home with very few comments about any sympathy towards her or what he did to her or what she's having to live with for the rest of her life.

"I think the sentence he got was pathetic. The maximum you can get for rape is life. The minimum you would normally expect to get is seven to eight years."

Throughout the trial Archibald was portrayed as "a simple man, primitively naive."

Peter Gilchrist, the psychologist who examined Archibald for the defence, said Archibald had an IQ of 52 and the mental age of a nine-year-old. The judge said she had taken Archibald's low intelligence into consideration when passing sentence.

Alan, with the support of the police, refutes these claims.

"I query whether he's as simple as he makes out to be", he said. "I think he was cleverer than a lot of people gave him credit for. Of course, he only uttered one word throughout the whole of the trial and the sentencing and that was in answer to this 'are you John Archibald?' 'Yes'. That's the only word he said.

"The Crown Prosecution tried to tell me that the views of the psychiatrist were uncontroversial I dispute that very strongly. They are controversial. I'm not convinced he is a simple man."

If Archibald had managed to avoid prison, Susan would have revealed her identity and given up the anonymity granted to all victims of sex offences.

Alan, who talked through the option with his wife, explained: "It would have been the rape of English justice had he got away with it.

"We would have done it, yes, if he had not got a prison sentence, because we felt so strongly that that would have been the second stage beyond the phrase 'getting away with murder' and getting away with rape."

Bexley Penhaligon, of Wycombe Rape Crisis, said: "I think it's shameful a man has been given a lower sentence because he is of low intelligence. Such an inadequate sentence serves to deter women from reporting rape. He [Archibald] has committed a serious sexual offence whatever his intelligence or intellect. His sentence should reflect what he has done."

A spokesman for the Crown Prosecution Service said they had not made a decision on whether to appeal against the length of the sentence.

He said: "All options are being considered at the moment. We are reviewing the papers and a decision will be taken in due course."

The names of Alan and Susan have been changed for legal reasons.

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