Silence of the Lambs rapist sent back to UK

A BRITISH rapist who carried out a horrific sex attack likened to the film The Silence of the Lambs has been deported from Australia to the UK.

Leslie Cunliffe posed as a policeman to kidnap a 21-year-old woman, then gagged, blindfolded and bound her, strapped a fake bomb to her body and raped her.

He also demanded a one million Australian dollar ransom from her family during the May 1999 attack in Geelong, near Melbourne.

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Australian police compared the shed where he imprisoned the woman for seven hours with a “dungeon” from the 1991 film The Silence of the Lambs.

Cunliffe, 63, who holds a British passport, served 12 years in prison in Australia for the rape before being freed in April last year.

The Australian authorities then cancelled his visa on “character” grounds under a provision in their Immigration Act that allows them to expel people convicted of serious offences.

Cunliffe, who reportedly emigrated from Britain in 1967, last month lost an appeal against the Australian Department of Immigration’s decision that he should be deported to the UK.

It is understood that he arrived at Heathrow Airport, in London, on Thursday.

A spokesman for Australia’s Department of Immigration said: “I can confirm that he left on a flight to the UK from Melbourne at 3pm local time on Wednesday. He was given an appropriate short-term support package for his arrival.

“He has now left the country and is starting his new life in the UK. It is no longer an Australian matter.”

A series of ageing British sex offenders have been deported back to the UK under Australia’s tough immigration policy. Paedophiles Raymond Horne and Robert Excell were both returned to Britain.

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