More than 20 years after John Clayton Sims brutally bashed and attempted to rape a teenage woman in a nightclub car park, he has been sentenced to 15 years in jail.

Sims, now 46, made headlines in 2014, when he was arrested in South Australia and extradited to Sydney for the 1996 attack, which left the then 19-year-old woman in hospital with facial fractures and a brain injury.

For his victim, who cannot be named for legal reasons, it was a painful two decades before police would make an arrest.

But advances in forensic technology would finally link blood from the scene of the crime to Sims in May 2015.