An unnamed judge let a paedophile who messaged ‘barely pubescent girls’ stay in the UK to protect him from his family’s disapproval of his actions back home.
The man – granted anonymity for his protection – was caught messaging paedophile hunters, disguised using decoy child profiles, online in August 2022.
Horrifyingly, the Pakistani father-of-two had believed he was really speaking to ‘barely pubescent girls’.
Admitting three counts of attempting to cause a child under 16 to engage in a sexual act, the man was handed an 18-month prison sentence.
He had started grooming young girls long before this in March 2021.
But an unnamed judge ruled removing him from the UK would be ‘unduly harsh’, a tribunal heard.
The judge explained the paedophile would have ‘significant difficulties’ in Pakistan because his family there have a ‘dim view’ of his crimes – and stopped the man from being deported.
It meant the paedophile was allowed to stay in the country despite being a registered sex offender.
An unnamed judge let a paedophile who messaged ‘barely pubescent girls’ stay in the UK to protect him from his family’s disapproval of his actions back home.
The judge’s decision has now been appealed and dubbed ‘plainly wrong’, The Sun reported.
The pervert, known as just MH, had come to the UK on a spousal visa in 2018 but was in prison in December 2022 when he was told that he would be deported.
The paedophile appealed his deportation on human rights grounds. This was rejected in June 2023, a month after he left prison.
But his second appeal – exactly a year later – was allowed by an unnamed, specialist judge.
The ruling also came as the judge acknowledged MH had a ‘genuine and subsisting relationship’ with his two children, aged three and four – who he had 12 hours supervised contact a day with.
The Home Office successfully appealed the unnamed judge’s decision in November last year – so the whole case will be reheard.
Appeals Judge Judith Gleeson dubbed the unnamed judge’s ruling that the paedophile could stay as ‘plainly wrong’.
The paedophile’s crimes started while his wife was in hospital with Covid.
His wife regularly visited him in prison – and felt ‘partly responsible’ for his actions because they had not had sex.
The unnamed judge accepted her ‘guilt’ for not being in ‘intimate relations’ with her husband.
But Judge Gleeson said: ‘The characterisation of the offences as a mere blip in the appellant’s life is unsound and inadequately reasoned.
‘The emphasis on the wife’s failure to provide intimate relations to her husband when she was unwell does not explain why the claimant felt the need to engage with barely pubescent girl children online.’
A Home Office spokesman said: ‘Foreign nationals who commit crime should be in no doubt that we will do everything to make sure they are not free on Britain’s streets, including removal from the UK at the earliest possible opportunity.
‘We remain resolute in our commitment to ensuring there are no barriers to deport foreign criminals, as it is in the public interest for these people to be removed swiftly.’