'Violent predator' behind two rapes seven years apart facing life in jail

'Brutal assault': Jonathon Graden was caught on camera leaving the scene of the attack in Whitechapel
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A married businessman is facing life in prison after being exposed as a “violent predator” who carried out night-time rapes on two lone women more than seven years apart.

Jonathon Graden, 31, was filmed on camera leaving the scene of an attack in November last year, when he followed a 22-year-old women into a building in Whitechapel and raped her in the basement.

He left a body warmer and hat behind at the scene. DNA revealed he was also responsible for an unsolved attack on another woman in Leytonstone in 2011 when he targeted a 24-year-old as she walked home from a night out with friends, carrying out the attack as she crossed the A12 on a footbridge.

After a high-profile appeal for information over the 2018 attack, Graden handed himself in to police. He was then linked to the second rape more than seven years earlier.

Graden, of Belvedere in Kent, has pleaded guilty to three counts of rape, with two separate charges arising from the 2011 attack.

At Snaresbrook crown court on Friday Judge Sheila Canavan adjourned sentencing until July 19 and remanded Graden in custody until then.

She told him: “I can’t see any circumstances in which I would not consider you dangerous. Seven years apart, two separate random victim attacks.

“You have pleaded guilty to some of the most serious offending anyone can commit and are looking at an extremely lengthy custodial sentence.”

The judge added she will consider whether to jail Graden for life at the sentencing hearing, once he has been assessed by a probation officer for “the danger you pose young women you come across in the street”.

Graden, who is married and runs his own business, was caught on CCTV approaching the victim in the street near to Spitalfields market at around 2am.

He followed her into a nearby building and then raped her when she was trapped in the basement.

Detective Chief Inspector Neil Rawlinson, from the Met’s sexual offences unit, said: “This was a horrific attack carried out by a violent predator on a young woman going about her lawful business in what is one of London’s most popular areas for late-night socialising.

“It was a brutal assault that has left her very traumatised.”

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