Australian jailed to 10 years over British backpacker rape

SYDNEY – An Australian man who kidnapped and repeatedly raped a British backpacker during a monthlong ordeal in the country's Outback has been jailed for 10 years.

Marcus Allyn Keith Martin had pleaded guilty in the District Court of Cairns, in the north of Queensland state, to charges of rape and deprivation of liberty against the 22-year-old Liverpool woman.

Prosecutors told the court the pair met in Cairns in January 2017 and had begun a relationship.

When the relationship soured, Martin subjected the woman to weeks of physical abuse while forcing her to drive him hundreds of miles south and then into the west of the state.

Police intercepted the pair after the woman, whose name was suppressed by the court, drove off from a petrol station without paying for fuel.