THE mother of a Winchester woman brutally murdered by a sex offender while he was on licence from prison told a inquest jury of her grief.

Anthony Rice, 54, is serving a life sentence for strangling and stabbing Naomi Bryant, 40, in 2005.

Her mother, Verna Bryant, has fought for several years to be granted an inquest into her daughter’s death because hearings do not normally take place after criminal proceedings. She has been backed by civil rights organisation, Liberty.

Mrs Bryant, 72, of Meadowland, Kings Worthy, told the hearing on Monday: “I don’t want it to happen to anyone else. I don’t want them to go through this pain.”

She said Naomi’s daughter had lost her mother and her home. She described Naomi as creative, artistic and happy at school.

Central Hampshire coroner Grahame Short said the jury must decide if “failings of the state contributed to Naomi’s death”, which he described as a “brutal murder”, and what lessons could be learned.

But Mr Short said the question ofwhether the rapist should have been released from prison in the first place would not be part of the proceedings.

The coroner said the hearing was not an inquiry into the penal system, and Rice’s release was too wide an area to address.

The inquest at Winchester Law Courts, which is likely to take up to seven weeks, will look at the issues surrounding the murder, including the role of the probation service.

At the time of the murder, Rice was under the supervision of Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements, Mappa — a government framework designed to manage violent offenders.

Rice had a long history of sexual offences against women and children dating back to 1972.

It included a serious sexual assault against a five-year-old girl and rape of a woman, and in 1989 he was jailed for life at the Old Bailey.

The inquest heard evidence from Dr Julia Long, who held therapy sessions with Rice while he was at HMP Grendon in Buckinghamshire in the late 1990s.

She said: “I would say I got to know him as much as anyone else in the group.”

She added that Rice admitted taking drugs smuggled into the jail, which might have gone undetected.

“There was nothing in it for him to disclose these things, which led to my assessment that he was engaging in the process and being honest,” said Dr Long.

She then read a psychiatric report from the late 1990s that said Rice “made good progress” but “there is considerable work to do”.

Rice’s lawyers secured his release from jail in 2004, and hewas housed at Elderfield hostel for ex-offenders in Otterbourne.

Nine months later he killed Ms Bryant, a multiple sclerosis sufferer and alcoholic, at her home in Rowlings Road, Weeke, after meeting her in a pub a few days earlier.

He decided to kill her, he told police, because she stopped holding his hand as they walked to her house and this made him angry.

She was found by her ex-partner naked under a duvet in her bedroom.

She had been strangled with a pair of tights and stabbed 16 times.