Hunger-striking rapist threw scalding drink in officer’s eyes at HMP Wakefield

Andrew Johnson, who was jailed in 2018 for attacking a woman and her daughter while on day release from a psychiatric unit, caused blisters to the officer’s head, and left him temporarily blind.

Leeds Crown Court was told that the 51-year-old had been in the day care area on the morning of August 13 last year, having been held in the health care unit of the maximum-security Love Lane prison due to his refusal to eat. He was with two officers, and he got up to serve himself a hot drink before returning to his seat, but without warning threw the boiling drink with full force in one of the officer’s faces.

The burning liquid went in his eyes and over his neck and shoulders. Along with the blisters, it caused an ulcer on his eyeball and left him unable to see.

Prosecutor Austin Newman said Johnson, also known as Andrew Le Feuvre, was jailed for life in 2009. He pretended to be a policeman to get into a woman's flat in south London, raping her and attempting to rape her 10-year-old daughter. He had already been jailed in 1996 for indecent assault on a six-year-old at a hotel in Jersey.

Thanks to advances in DNA profiling, he was jailed again in 2016 for indecent assault and attempted rape from 1995. Then in 2018, while on day release, he followed a woman and a child home and broke into their home before being chased away. He admitted trespassing with intent to commit a sexual offence and was jailed for seven years.

Not represented at Leeds Crown Court this week, he admitted attempting to cause GBH with intent on the prison officer.

Appearing via video link from HMP Long Lartin in Worcestershire, he told the court: “I would like to apologise for my conduct. What happened that day I can’t account for. It came off the back of a suicide attempt in May 2022 which led to the food refusal. Being locked up and the regime took its toll.”

Judge Simon Batiste gave him a four-year jail sentence, which will begin once his current sentence ends.