Alan Blackwell

Alan Blackwell, a violent male transvestite, is a serial rapist who has received multiple life sentences for sadistic rapes of young women and girls in the north east of England.

Blackwell, aged 42 and living in Jarrow with his elderly mother, was first jailed for 14 years in 1997 for the rape of a 12-year-old girl on her way to school in Washington. He was dressed in women’s clothing when he carried out the attack, tying her up and dragging her into a “lair” in undergrowth. Despite being so terrified she feared she was going to die, the girl managed to give such a good description of Blackwell that he was apprehended quickly. He was branded an extreme danger to the public when he was sentenced at Newcastle Crown Court and incarcerated at high security Category A men’s prison, HMP Frankland.

Officers from Northumbria Police’s Operation Phoenix cold case team were then able to use advances in DNA testing techniques to link Blackwell to an earlier attack in June 1994 on a 19 year old woman whom he dragged off a South Shields street and attempted to rape. Twenty years later in 2004 when Blackwell was aged 50, he was jailed for life for the attack.

Two years later Blackwell was also linked via DNA to the rape of a 15-year-old girl in July 1989, who was attacked as she camped with two friends on grassland in Jarrow. Again, Blackwell was dressed as a woman as he carried out the rape at knifepoint and threatened to kill all three children. He received a second life sentence for the attack.

A report on Blackwell, prepared for trial stated that “there is a high risk of reconviction in particular because of your distorted thinking pattern and inability to comprehend the devastating effect rape has on its victims.”

One of his victims bravely waived her lifelong anonymity in 2018 to protest her horror that Blackwell was being prepared for release from jail after serving the minimum terms of his life sentences. It is currently unknown if Blackwell remains in jail.

Photo via Chronicle Live

Media reports

BBC News (2005) Man, 50, charged with 1989 rape http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/tyne/4402812.stm

Chronicle Live https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/mum-speaks-horror-serial-rapist-15079101 archive

Chronicle Live https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/rapist-convicted-of-third-attack-1526224 archive

Chronicle Live https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/life-sentence-for-sadistic-rapist-1528793 archive

The Journal http://www.thejournal.co.uk/news/north-east-news/transvestite-rapist-given-life-sentence-4582521 archive

Northern Echo https://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/7000746.transvestite-rapist-admits-second-attack/ archive

The Journal 12.02.04 DNA snares child-rapist transvestite archive