Serial rapist Joseph McCann who has been found guilty of a horrific spree of sex attacks was one of the first people in the UK to be handed an ASBO.

The 34-year-old was yesterday (December 6) convicted of 37 counts of rape - some of which took place in Lancashire.

And he was banned from a Manchester suburb when he was 14 after he and his brothers terrorised residents.

McCann will be sentenced on Monday for crimes including rape, kidnap and false imprisonment, but was in trouble with the law from an early age.

He and his brothers were slapped with ASBOs back in 1999.

(Image: PA)

A page of the Manchester Evening News from 2000 details the offences after the paper won the right to name the young brothers.

They showed a photo taken outside court shows McCann and his older brother Sean, who later killed himself in jail in 2016, flicking V-signs to photographers.

Tony Blair introduced ASBOs in 1998 as a way to address offending through civil action rather than criminal.

They were often handed out to young delinquents and remained in use until 2014, when they were replaced with injunctions and Criminal Behaviour Orders.

McCann's criminal behaviour continued throughout his adult life, culminating in a horrific two-week spate of violent sex attacks in April and May this year.

A probation error had seen him released from prison where he'd been serving time for burglary.

(Image: PA)

Pumped up on cocaine and vodka, McCann began his attacks in Watford before moving to London, Greater Manchester, Cheshire and Lancashire.

His victims ranged in age from 11 to 71. On three occasions he abducted women off the street at knifepoint and raped them repeatedly.

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On another occasion he went home with a woman he met in a bar in Greater Manchester, only to tie her to her bed and force her to listen to him molesting her 11-year-old son and 17-year-old daughter.

He evaded police for two weeks before he was discovered in a tree in Cheshire and arrested on May 6.

On Friday McCann was found guilty of 10 counts of false imprisonment, seven counts of rape, one count of rape of a child, two counts of causing or inciting a person to engage in sexual activity without consent, seven counts of kidnap, one count of attempted kidnap, three counts of causing or inciting a child under 13 to engage in sexual activity, three counts of assault by penetration, one count of sexual assault and two counts of committing a sexual offence with intent.

It took the jury foreman just seven-and-a-half minutes to deliver verdicts on all counts.

McCann, who never appeared in the dock during court proceedings, will be sentenced on Monday.