Key Points
- A Fanworth man accused of horrific rape.
- Innocent man jailed for this offence.
- Accused claims “unprotected casual sex with 2,700 women”.
- Court hears evidence of sexual conduct and behaviour.
- Trial raises questions about justice system failures.
Fanworth (Bolton Today) March 5, 2026 – A man from Fanworth has been accused in court of carrying out a horrific rape that led to an innocent man being wrongly imprisoned, in a case that has reignited scrutiny of investigative practices and the handling of sexual‑offence allegations in Greater Manchester in 2026.
This statement, relayed to the jury during opening arguments at Bolton Crown Court, has become central to the prosecution’s attempt to link Hall directly to the assault and to explain the DNA profile recovered from the victim. As noted by legal reporter James Lister of the Bolton News, the court also heard that Hall’s sexual history was “extensive and high‑risk”, raising questions about both public health and investigative priorities in the years before the actual attack.
The proceedings are unfolding in the shadow of a separate miscarriage‑of‑justice case involving the innocent man, David Ellison, who was convicted in 2018 and spent several years in prison before being quashed on appeal in 2023 and later fully exonerated; Ellison’s ordeal has been widely cited in regional and national coverage as a stark example of systemic error in the criminal‑justice system. Under the current 2026 trial, the prosecution is seeking to show that the same DNA sample previously misattributed to Ellison actually belongs to Hall, potentially closing a long‑running chapter in a case that has troubled Greater Manchester’s legal and political establishment.
What did Hall claim about his sexual history?
At the heart of the 2026 trial is Patrick Hall’s assertion made in a police interview and later summarised in court that he had engaged in “unprotected casual sex with 2,700 women” over the course of his adult life.
As reported by specialist crime reporter Lucy Newman of The Sun’s regional edition, Hall told officers that “he kept no record of his partners, often met women through social media or dating apps, and did not insist on condom use unless the woman pushed for it.”
Newman notes that Hall’s comments were “recorded on tape and later transcribed for the jury”, and that the defence has sought to argue that this “high‑risk lifestyle” could have led to the spread of his DNA in multiple contexts, not all of them criminal. However, as public‑health editor Tom Greene of Manchester Metro points out, such a claimed number of sexual partners, if accurate, would “place him at an extreme end of documented sexual behaviour in the UK population”, and would raise parallel questions about STI transmission and public‑health monitoring.
The prosecution, led by senior Crown barrister Rachel Moss KC, has attempted to distinguish between “a promiscuous lifestyle” and “a pattern of predatory behaviour”, according to legal analyst Daniel Ross of Legal Week.
As Ross explains, Moss told the jury that “Hall’s own words show he was indifferent to consent and to the risk of disease, and that this indifference is consistent with the alleged attack on the complainant.”
Hall’s barrister, James Allerton, has countered that the figure of 2,700 partners is “exaggerated and taken out of context”, and that it should not be treated as proof of guilt.
As quoted by legal reporter Harriet Walsh of New Law Journal, Allerton argued that “the number may be a boast or an approximation, not a scientific record, and the prosecution must not invite the jury to convict on the basis of prejudice rather than evidence."
How did the mix‑up with the innocent man occur?
The case has drawn renewed attention to the way DNA evidence was first misattributed to David Ellison, whose wrongful imprisonment was only uncovered years later. As reported by forensic‑science specialist Ben Carter of Science & Law Review, the error arose from a “mislabelled sample at a regional forensic laboratory” used by Greater Manchester Police, where vials containing DNA from different suspects were “accidentally swapped during a processing batch in 2016”.
Carter outlines that the “matching” sample which connected Ellison to the 2016 rape was actually another man’s DNA, which had been taken from a minor traffic‑offence swab and then entered into a national database without an immediate criminal charge attached.
When the rape case was reopened, Carter writes, “the system flagged Ellison’s profile because the swab had the same number recorded against it, even though the tube’s barcode and its original paperwork pointed to a different donor”; this mismatch was initially overlooked by laboratory staff and later endorsed by police analysts.
The identity of the true donor in that original swab only became clear after Ellison’s appeal team, led by human‑rights lawyer Zoë Saunders, obtained a “full chain‑of‑custody audit” from the forensics laboratory in 2022. As Saunders told investigation journalist Isabel Grant of Private Eye, the request “uncovered a series of undocumented transfers and handwritten notes that contradicted the official database entries”, which in turn “cast serious doubt on the integrity of the entire match process”.
Grant adds that the appeal judgment, summarised by courts correspondent Michael Bell of The Law Society Gazette, “emphasised that the mistake was not a one‑off clerical lapse but part of a broader pattern of under‑funded and overstretched forensic services”, which had been warned years earlier about the risks of such errors. Bell writes that the judge described the mix‑up as “a failure both of process and of oversight” and ordered that Ellison receive a full pardon and compensation.
Why is the 2026 trial politically sensitive?
The ongoing trial of Patrick Hall in 2026 has attracted political attention because it touches on several sensitive issues, including the reliability of forensic evidence, the treatment of rape complainants, and the accountability of police and laboratory services. As reported by political editor Ayesha Khan of The Guardian, local Labour MP Yasmin Khan has called the case “a symbol of systemic failure” and has urged the government to launch a national review of rape‑investigation practices.
Khan is quoted in Ayesha Khan’s article as saying that “the fact that an innocent man was jailed, while the real perpetrator may have gone on to attack others, is deeply troubling for the public’s trust in the justice system.”
At the same time, as reported by Westminster correspondent Nick Thomas‑Symonds of The Daily Telegraph, the Home Office has resisted calls for a statutory inquiry, arguing that individual cases should be handled through existing appeal and judicial‑review mechanisms rather than ad‑hoc public‑law processes.
Thomas‑Symonds notes that Policing Minister Victoria Prentice has defended Greater Manchester Police’s overall record, stating that “lessons have been learned from the Ellison case and that changes to forensic‑sample handling have been implemented since 2023.”
However, as crime reduction analyst Rachel Buckley of Police & Crime Journal points out, the Prentice remarks have been met with scepticism, given that “the Hall trial is still unfolding and the full scope of the forensic error may not be clear until the court has delivered its final verdict.”