A court reporter who helped put a rapist behind bars after uncovering crucial evidence has been presented with her second award recognising what she did.

Nicky Harley from the Hull Daily Mail has won an Outstanding Employee Award after she tracked down photographic evidence which helped ensure Kevin Moloney faced justice more than 25 years after raping an elderly woman.

She was named the second winner of the award by Northcliffe’s Mail News & Media and given £200 for her ‘outstanding investigative reporting’.

Earlier this year, Nicky was given a rare High Sheriff’s Award, winning praise from a top judge for her ‘inquiring mind’ which helped change the course of the rape trial.

The awards were launched by the publisher this year and every two months someone is chosen following nominations from colleagues across the company, with four managers deciding on the winner.

Nicky said: “I’m really pleased to have been nominated for the award by my colleagues. It was very kind of them.

“I received the award after I found new evidence to help convict a rapist. It was a great story and it was fantastic to be able to help the police to convict a criminal but at the end of the day I was just doing my job.”

Moloney, 44, was jailed for four years in February after admitting raping 69-year-old Beatrice De Kanter, who died in 2001, in her home in Cottingham in 1985.

When he first went on trial for the offence last year, he claimed the victim had invited him and consented to sex and the jury was unable to reach a verdict.

Moloney had actually broken in through the back door but as the victim had died, the prosecution was unable to disprove his version of events.

But as part of research for a background article, Nicky tracked down former detective superintendent Barry Lilley, who led the original investigation, and he revealed he had kept copies of crime scene photographs which showed a smashed back door – the originals of which had been lost.

This led to Moloney, of Elloughton Road, Brough, pleading guilty to the rape before he was due to go on trial for the second time.