Man jailed for raping a woman he said he would get home safely.

A man who raped a woman after pledging to get her home safely when she became separated from her friends has been given a 16-year sentence.

John Callaway, 43, of Shakespeare Close in the Everton area of Liverpool, was an alarm engineer and was on shift in Liverpool city centre on 24 March 2023 around 5am when he approached the woman in his works van.

He pulled up near to the 20-year-old victim and got out of the car and approached her. He asked her if her friends had left her. He said he could take her safely home.

The woman had become separated from her boyfriend and friends on a night out. She got into the car believing Callaway was a taxi driver, but he did not take her home.

Instead, he pulled over as he got out of the city centre and raped her. He then abandoned her, alone, in a road, nowhere near where she lived.

She rang her mum and contacted her friends to say she had been raped. She got a taxi home and told her flatmates what had happened.

They called the police. They described her as hysterical, frightened, and confused. She kept saying that she did not know where she was.

Callaway was identified and arrested. He told officers that he had come to the aid of a desperate young girl who was repeatedly asking for help to get home. But none of that was borne out by CCTV from the scene.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) authorised the police to charge Callaway with rape but he denied it and said all contact was consensual.

The case went to trial and Callaway was found guilty. On 1 December 2025 at Liverpool Crown Court, he was given a 16-year sentence: 13 years in prison and three on extended licence. 

A restraining order was applied for by the Crown Prosecution Service, preventing him contacting the victim in any way ever again. This was granted by the judge who described Callaway as “dangerous”. 

In a statement the victim said, “Though my life didn’t end when I was assaulted, for a long time after it had happened, and, occasionally on bad days, I wish that it had”.

Senior Crown Prosecutor Edward Rattigan, of CPS Mersey-Cheshire, said: “John Callaway is a dangerous sexual predator who deliberately targeted a woman who was on her own and vulnerable.

“He pretended he could keep her safe. He told her he would take her home. But he did nothing of the kind.

“Instead, he took advantage of the situation to rape her and then abandoned her. 

“He had no thought for the damage and distress he was causing this young woman. Her safety and feelings meant nothing to him. 

“The Crown Prosecution Service would like to thank her for her help in bringing this prosecution. Without her testimony we would not have been able to bring this dangerous man to justice.”