A WOMAN who was repeatedly raped by her father has told of her disgust that his licence will expire in May – three years before he completes a 12 year jail sentence.

Lisa Metcalfe, who is from Selby but currently lives abroad, said she fears returning to Britain when the probation service is no longer tasked with keeping tabs on her father, David Rookes.

“Come May this year, I’m no longer protected from this man,” she said. “I’m worried he will try to approach me or harass me.

“I’m due to return soon but because of my concerns about him, I’m not willing to come back to Britain and may be forced to stay away from the country, even though this makes it hard for members of my family to visit me and my children.”

However, probation chiefs said while it was correct people jailed before 2005 only stayed on licence until the three-quarter point of their sentence, they remained very closely supervised within the community by responsible agencies. They said since 2005, a new law meant offenders stayed on licence for the whole of their sentence.

Lisa said Rookes, who abused her from when she was nine until she was 16, was released from jail in 2010 after serving only seven years of the jail sentence imposed in 2003 after being convicted of four rapes, one attempted rape, three indecent assaults and two indecencies with a child, but she had expected him to remain on licence until the 12 years was up.

“It is logical for his licence to run through to 2015,” she said. “And I’ve done much more time than him.”

She also claimed she was neither consulted nor informed about the change, and only found out about it through a third party.

She said she was also concerned that Rookes was now living just a couple of minutes walk from a primary school in a village near Selby.

York and North Yorkshire Probation Trust said it would be inappropriate for it to go into detail or comment on individual cases, but protecting the public was a “top priority”.

A spokeswoman said that when an offender’s licence expired, the remainder of the sentence was termed as the “at risk” period and stayed in force until the sentence expired.

“During the ‘at risk’ period an offender can be recalled to prison to serve the remainder of their sentence if new imprisonable offences are committed,” she said.

“We want to reassure the public that we don’t take risks with their safety and whilst we can never totally eliminate risk, people convicted of serious offences are very closely supervised within the community by responsible agencies.”

She said if victims of sexual offences wanted, the trust would keep them informed about the progress of the offender through prison and they had the chance to give their views about any conditions applying to the offender on release.

These included preventing the offender from going near the victim and even placing an exclusion zone on the offender to stop them causing any further worry to the victim.

Daughter determined to see justice

LISA Metcalfe spoke to The Press in 2003 following her father’s conviction. She said that with the support of her boyfriend, she had finally reported the attacks by her father to police.

She said it had meant going through the trauma of describing in court the abuse she had suffered, but she was determined he would not get away with it.

She broke down crying as she gave her evidence from a room near the court via a TV link. “If he had admitted what he had done, he could have spared me the ordeal of giving evidence,” she said.