MONSTER RAPIST STRIKES AGAIN — PREDATOR WITH EIGHT RAPE OFFENCES JAILED FOR SECOND LIFE
A career sex predator with a shocking history of rape has been handed another life sentence after brutally attacking a young woman he lured to his flat.Clifford Ian Church, 63, preyed on the 25-year-old victim after convincing her to travel with him to Harrogate with promises of £100 and drugs.
But once inside his flat, the façade of the “nice old man” quickly vanished.
Prosecutor Catherine Silverton told York Crown Court that Church locked the door and demanded the woman strip.
When she refused, he knocked her to the floor and threatened violence, warning she would be hit every time she said no.
The terrified woman managed to flee naked into the communal hallway of the block of flats.
But the predator chased after her — naked except for socks — up two flights of stairs, grabbing at her as she desperately clung to a door frame while screaming for help.
Her ordeal only ended when a resident, alerted by the screams, opened their door and intervened.
Police later revealed that after the attack Church hurriedly dressed and fled the flat, throwing the woman’s clothes into the hallway.
The case exposed a disturbing pattern of offending.
Church was already on parole from a life sentence for a brutal rape and sexual assault on a woman in Redcar — an attack the judge said was strikingly similar to the latest crime.
His record stretches back decades.
In 1997 he was jailed for eight years for raping and attacking a 16-year-old girl, and across his lifetime he has racked up eight offences of rape and attempted rape.
Despite that history, he had been released from prison in 2017.
The latest attack happened on 9 August 2025, triggering a major police manhunt across Yorkshire and Cleveland before officers eventually arrested him at Bradford Interchange weeks later.
Sentencing him, Judge Simon Hickey said the attack was “prolonged, determined and sustained”, leaving the victim terrified.
Church was handed a second life sentence and must serve at least 12 years before being considered for parole.
He also remains on the sex offenders’ register for life.
The court heard his guilty plea spared the victim the ordeal of giving evidence.
But the chilling case raises a troubling question for many: how a man with such a long record of sexual violence was free to offend again.
