April 26, 2001 16:08: A 37-YEAR-OLD Bromley woman was the victim of a sexual assault having got into a car she had mistaken for a minicab.

The attack happened after the woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was making her way to her brother's home. She was walking down Old Kent Road when she spotted a car she took to be a minicab parked in Avondale Road.

She got into the back of the car and was driven a short distance back on the Old Kent Road before the car turned left into the quiet residential street of Marlborough Grove.

The attacker parked the car next to a block of residential flats and climbed onto the back seat. He subjected the woman to a brutal sexual assault before she escaped and called the police.

The attacker, described as a black man, about 5ft 7in, with cropped black hair, escaped in his silver car, last seen heading towards Rolls Road.

DS Paul Clifford from Walworth CID said: "This was a particularly terrifying ordeal for the woman involved. This seems to have been an opportunistic attack and it is very important the public give us as much help as possible.

"We need to hear from people who were in that part of the Old Kent Road on the morning of April 15 at about 4am and anyone who noticed a silver car in Avondale Road or Marlborough Grove.We would also like to speak to a white man in his early 20s with short dark hair who talked to the victim between the time her attacker left and the police arrived."

Call DS Paul Clifford on 020 7232 6277 or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.