Mark Gordon is a psychopath, says woman he raped when he was 14

Mark Gordon is a dangerous "psychopath" who should have been locked up for life as a child, an American woman he raped 36 years ago has told the BBC.

Gordon was jailed for attacking his neighbour at knifepoint in Miami when he was aged 14 and BBC News has now obtained US court papers revealing the shocking nature of the crimes.

Gordon, 51, and his partner, Constance Marten, 38, have been found guilty of gross negligence manslaughter, after their baby, Victoria, died while they were on the run from UK authorities.

The pair became the focus of a nationwide search after Gordon - who was then on the UK's sex offender's register - and Marten disappeared while she was pregnant.

Social services had already taken four of their other children into care.

Gordon, who was born in the UK but left as a child, has always maintained his rape conviction was unlawful.

For legal reasons, the jury at their first Old Bailey trial was not told Gordon had been convicted of rape in 1989, but details emerged during the retrial.

He was sentenced to 40 years in prison and, after serving 20 years, was deported back to the UK.

BBC News can reveal the full details of the brutal assault, having obtained court documents from his sentencing hearing at Broward County Courthouse, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in 1990.

The victim of his crime, Jane - not her real name - told the BBC she had followed the recent legal proceedings from thousands of miles away in the US.

She says she was "floored" when she found out the man who attacked her more than three decades ago was on the run from police in the UK in 2023.

Jane says Gordon should have been imprisoned in the US for life. "The four-and-a-half hours I spent with him was enough to know he is evil," she says.

Warning: This story contains descriptions of a violent sexual attack.

A police image of Mark Gordon taken in 1989 at the time of his arrest

Gordon moved to the US as a child with his mother. They initially lived in New York, before settling in Miami.

US court papers reveal how, in late April 1989, he broke into his neighbour's bungalow one night, wearing a mask and armed with a knife and a pair of garden shears.

The court heard how Gordon raped Jane, a mother-of-two, multiple times in an attack that lasted more than four hours. He threatened to kill her children, who were aged nine and seven at the time, if she screamed.

Jane, who was then aged 30, told Judge Stanton Kaplan she had been woken by the sound of her dog barking.

"I went to my bedroom door and hesitated," she said. "I opened the door and was met with the sight of a masked figure dressed in black." Jane said she screamed and he told her: "Don't scream or I'll kill your children."

"I knew there was no way out," she said.

"I was told to say goodbye to my children because this was the day I was going to die. I was told I was worthless, not as good as the others, which led me to believe I was not the first one he had raped.

"As he was telling me these things, he was running the knife up and down my body. He was jabbing at my skin deep enough to hurt but not cut.

"He was holding it over my heart, saying: 'All I have to do is push and you are dead'. I was terrified my children would find my body covered in blood. He enjoyed the nightmare he was causing."

A police photo of a shovel used by Gordon to attack another neighbour whose home he also broke into

The same court heard, three weeks after attacking Jane, Gordon broke into the home of a couple called Patrick and Annette Nash, who lived a few doors down.

Prosecutors said masked and dressed in black, he made his way to their bedroom. When Annette woke and screamed, Gordon hit her husband with a shovel before fleeing.

At a hearing on 29 February 1990, Gordon pleaded guilty to four counts of armed sexual battery (rape), one of armed kidnapping, one of aggravated battery and two of burglary with a weapon. He later withdrew his guilty plea and stood trial in a chaotic court case in 1994 where he was convicted.

The defence's main witness in mitigation during the sentencing hearing was Gordon's mother, Sylvia Satchell. She revealed to the judge that her son had been the victim of sexual abuse at the age of four while at a nursery in Birmingham.

"I'm asking for a little leniency for him," she told the judge. "This is a first offender and I wouldn't want him to be a hardened criminal at this young age. He's only 15 now."

In a foretaste of his behaviour during his Old Bailey trials, Gordon tried to sack his lawyer and said he was too sick to attend court. He was eventually sentenced to 40 years in prison.

After the attack, Jane's life fell apart. She said her home no longer felt safe and she could not spend another night there.

"Now I'm plagued by nightmares, living with friends or relatives, afraid to be alone," she told the court in 1990.

"My children lost me for months while I dealt with what happened to me."

Jane says she still remembers packing what she could into her car and moving away. Eventually her home was sold for a fraction of what it was worth.

She now lives in a different part of the US, but still misses the Florida climate - particularly during the winter. "The cold is so painful," she says. "Once a Florida girl, always a Florida girl - yet another loss caused by Mr Gordon."

Gordon was deported to the UK after serving 20 years in a US prison

During Gordon's 1990 sentencing hearing, held before he retracted his pleas, Jane implored the US judge: "Please protect the innocent by keeping the guilty in prison for his life. Show him no mercy. Show him the guilty are punished and not merely chastised."

"I wanted them to sentence him as an adult and not just let him out when he was 18," Jane says now. "He showed me no mercy. So show him no mercy and save the other women out there.

"I think he's just evil."

If you have been affected by the issues raised in this story, help and support is available via the BBC Action Line