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Innocent man jailed for 12 years for rape weeps alongside victim's family as real monster sees justice

As sex monster Mark Dixie was handed two more life sentences for attacks on women in London last Friday there was extraordinary moment in the public gallery.

The family of Sally Ann Bowman - the 18-year-old who was raped and murdered by Dixie - wept in the public gallery alongside Romano van der Dussen.

The Dutch national, 43, was also a victim of Dixie.

He was wrongly convicted of three rapes carried out by the twisted predator in Fuengirola on the Costa del Sol in 2003.

Mr van der Dussen spent 12 years in jail, being beaten, spat on and treated like a "cockroach" despite no DNA evidence linking him to the crimes.

If bungling Spanish police had done their jobs properly, Dixie would have been locked up and wouldn't have gone on to kill Sally Ann in Croydon, south London, in 2005.

Finally free after more than a decade in prison, Mr van der Dussen told the Croydon Adervtiser: "It was hell what I suffered due to him.

"I was looking at Dixie without blinking. He was looking like he was bored.

"I was thinking, ‘you have to feel something’, I couldn’t understand it, how can you not feel?”

His inability to understand the mind of Dixie turned to fury that this killer was not imprisoned sooner, and sadness at the tragic consequences of this policing error.

He said: “If police had done a proper job, if I wasn’t sent away and they had a look for the real perpetrator – then this poor girl [Sally Anne] would be alive today.

“This is why I cried when I saw her sisters, when I saw Linda [Sally Anne's mum] and her ex-husband. I was crying for them, I felt so sorry for them.”

“I had to be there because I cannot close this book, I cannot get on with my life.

"The family said to me, that I am another victim of Mark Dixie.”

Mr van der Dussen explained how the miscarriage of justice has ruined his life.

His daughter is soon to turn 17 and has not seen her father since she was an infant.

He said: “She was only three when I was jailed. She doesn’t know who I am.

"I lost my daughter because of this."

His mother also tragically died while he was in prison.

Mr van der Dussen was working at a cocktail bar in Fuengirola and sending money back home to the Netherlands when he was caught up in Dixie's crime spree.

Police arrested and charged the innocent Dutchman despite there being no DNA linking him to the sex attacks.

His ordeal in prison began immediately.

“As soon as a walked through the door the guards said I was a sex offender, basically go get him," he said.

"I was the lowest of the low.

“They could beat me, spit on me. I had no voice. I was a cockroach.

“I was suffering while days turned to weeks, weeks to months, months to years – and that’s my f****** life.

“They put me in the infirmary with beatings. "

"I even asked to be put into solitary, into ‘the hole’ for 23 hours a day for my own protection.

“To them you are a rapist, you are one of the lowest, down there with the paedophiles.”

He was released from prison in February 2016 when Dixie's guilt was established.

DNA evidence linking Dixie to the rapes came to light in 2007, but bureaucracy in the Spanish justice system held up the presentation of evidence and the acquittal.

Now a free man, Mr van der Dussen lives in Mallorca.

He faces a daily struggle to deal with the injustice he suffered due to the actions of predatory murderer and serial rapist Dixie.


(Daily Mirror)

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