A THUG who raped prostitutes when he was 13 and 14 wasn't caught for eleven YEARS due to a police blunder.

Paul Cleary, now 25, was today jailed for three years after taking his victims to isolated areas and battering them.

Cleary was 13 when he targeted his first victim in April 2007, taking the woman to a disused warehouse at around 9.30pm at night.

The victim agreed to sex for £30, but he started being "rough", so she pushed him away and said she always used condoms, the Liverpool Echo reports.

The woman went to get a condom out of her handbag, but as she looked down he "struck her to her head and continued to punch her with both hands".

Cleary ignored her pleas to stop and said "I want a s***," before forcing her head down.

The Echo reports how she was crying and struggling to breathe, but did as she was told out of fear.

He then told the woman he was going to batter her before running off.

The woman, who managed to flag down a taxi and call the police, suffered severe bruising and recalled thinking Cleary would kill her.

His second attack on the same road came around a month later on May 31, 2007, when he was 14.

The court heard how even at that age the boy was 6ft tall and would have appeared "a terrifying proposition" to the women he targeted.

He had met the second woman at a bus stop at 9pm, and showed her a wad of money before she agreed to give him oral sex for £20.

They went to an isolated grassed area, but when she got out a condom and knelt down, he punched her in the face and demanded a sex act.

The court heard how he punched her again and she carried on out of fear, as he said: "You dirty slag, youse are all whores, you deserve what you get".

Cleary then kicked her in the head and body, causing her to fell backwards, before leaving his DNA on her top.

The victim, who pulled out a panic alarm and ran away, suffered bruising and said she was left "scared of my own shadow".

She described Cleary as a "horrible monster".

Forensic examination of her top revealed a DNA profile matching the first victim's jacket, but not on any profile on Merseyside Police's database.

In 2009, Cleary committed an assault and his DNA was taken, but a system failure or "human error" meant it wasn't processed properly.

They finally made the link in February 2017, when he was arrested again.

Cleary was also arrested in June 2017, then aged 24, when he accepted having previously had oral sex with sex workers.

He initially denied raping or attacking either victim before admitting he had punched the second woman once, saying he was "so sorry".

Cleary admitted two counts of rape ahead of a trial. His convictions since include assault causing actual bodily harm, shoplifting and racially aggravated harassment

In mitigation, his defence lawyer Robert Lancaster said Cleary had suffered "real trauma" aged 11 when his mum died of a terminal illness, and developed anger issues.

Mr Lancaster said he was now in a stable relationship and worked in construction, but had post-traumatic stress disorder and "self-loathing" .

Judge Rachel Smith said Cleary could have been identified in 2009 "but for some sort of failure" by Merseyside Police.

She said he did not plead guilty initially because he was "under pressure from friends, your partner and extended family, who simply would not accept you were the perpetrator described".

Sentencing him to the 36 month jail term, Judge Smith the facts of the rapes demonstrated "a degree of culpability and maturity beyond your chronological age".