A teenager viciously raped by serial killer Peter Tobin four years before the murder of Vicky Hamilton has claimed he could have been stopped had police properly investigated her brutal assault.
The woman has come forward to reveal that despite a detailed photofit, detectives made little attempt to track down the man responsible for the attack which left her permanently scarred.
It was only when Donna, whose surname we are protecting, saw the image of Tobin during the hunt for Polish student Angelika Kluk that she recognised him as her rapist.
She told how in July 1987 she was pushed violently from behind and forced against a wall as she climbed a stairwell of a high-rise in Johnstone, Renfrewshire. She only survived when Tobin was interrupted after hearing a door open.
The now 52-year-old has decided to speak publicly for the first time about her harrowing ordeal following a new BBC documentary, The Hunt for Peter Tobin.
She insists it wrongly ‘glorifies’ police efforts and ‘does not tell the true story’ about how officers ‘missed an opportunity’ to catch him four years before he went on to murder West Lothian schoolgirl Vicky Hamilton in 1991.
The ordeal has left her with ‘survivor’s guilt’, so much so she feels the need to personally ‘apologise’ to the Hamilton family ‘on behalf of the police for their failings which could have prevented Vicky’s death’.
Donna, who was brutally attacked the day before her 16th birthday and reported what happened to the then Strathclyde Police the next day.
But despite providing officers with a detailed photo-fit of Tobin, who lived in the area at the time and an officer taking photos of her injuries, which included a broken foot, broken eye socket, a knife wound to her leg and a bite bark on her back, no follow-up investigation took place.
She said: “They just said it was a random attack and that I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I was made to feel like it was my fault.
“They asked ‘how short was your skirt?’ and ‘where was the bottom button on your blouse?’.
“I don’t feel like they took it seriously and I would like Vicky’s family to know that their sister shouldn’t have died if the police had done their job right in the ‘80s. I do hold them responsible.’
Serial killer Tobin, who threatened Donna he would ‘be back’ as he ‘wasn’t finished’ with her, was serving life sentences for the murders of the 15-year-old from Bathgate, Dinah McNicol, 18, of Essex, and Polish student Angelika Kluk, 23, .
He was only caught after the murder of Angelika in 2006 when her body was recovered from beneath floorboards of a church in Glasgow and he was linked to Vicky and then Dinah’s disappearances in 1991.
Donna contacted Police Scotland late last year to demand to see a record of her crime, she received a response, seen by the Mail, which stated: ‘I can confirm that our searches, based on the information provided, returned no information. Due to the passage of time, Police Scotland do not hold information from 1980s.’
As a last resort’ she emailed Police Scotland Chief Constable Jo Farrell last summer but, after no response, penned her a hand-written letter in November, after which she was invited to make a formal complaint.
She added: ‘This programme shouldn’t be promoting the police on what a good job they did, because they didn’t.
‘These girls would still be alive today if the police had carried out a thorough investigation in the 1980s after I was attacked by him. I blame myself for these girls’ deaths, I keep thinking did I not do enough, did I not describe him well enough? But they had a photo-fit of him. They knew he was from the area and they didn’t link it.’
Reliving the brutal attack she told how she heard footsteps as she climbed the stairwell but thought nothing of it. But then she was pushed from behind with ‘great force’ and her face hit the wall in front.
She was wearing a light scarf and a pink raincoat at the time and she said: ‘He tried to choke me with the scarf.’
She continued: ‘Then I saw the knife. He traced the tip of the blade around my calf like he was drawing on a bit of paper. Then he raped me.’
Even now Donna, who suffers from complex PTSD, still needs to take sedatives to get her through the night.
She said: ‘Every time I close my eyes I see his face. I can still smell him. To me it’s like it happened yesterday. It has shaped who I have become – I can’t work, I can’t got out. He’s evil and I pity any other female who has been too frightened to come forward or who has come forward and has not been listened to.’
Donna has now enlisted the help of Scottish Conservative MSP Pam Gosal as she continues her quest for justice for her and other victims.
She said: ‘It’s not just the psychological scars, it the physical scars; every time I look at my foot and see the bone sticking out, I know how I got it and who did it. Death seems the easy way out for him, but I’ve been left with the scars he gave. It’s a constant reminder.’
Tobin died in Edinburgh Royal Infirmary in 2002.
A spokesman for Police Scotland last night would only say: ‘We have received a complaint, it would be inappropriate to comment further at this time.’
A BBC spokesman said: ‘BBC documentary The Hunt for Peter Tobin highlights the three missing persons cases of Vicky Hamilton, Dinah McNicol and Angelika Kluk which would ultimately unmask a serial killer. The series also explores Tobin’s first marriage and his record of abuse against women.’