A Pakistani immigrant has been allowed to stay in Britain despite preying on “barely pubescent girls” when his wife would not have sex with him.
The paedophile, who has been granted anonymity for his own protection, was caught in August 2022 for messaging decoy children he believed were young girls online.
He was sentenced to 18 months in prison after admitting three counts of attempting to cause a child under 16 to engage in a sexual act.
The man, known online as MH, who had arrived in the UK on a spousal visa in 2018, was told he would be deported while in prison in late 2022.
The pedophile was caught in August 2022 for messaging decoy children he believed were young girls online
GETTY
He submitted an appeal on human rights grounds, which was rejected in June 2023, one month after his release, however his second appeal was accepted in June 2024.
MH told the tribunal hearing that he began grooming the young girls online in March 2021, when his wife was in hospital with Covid.
He continued for the next year until digital paedophile hunters caught him and he was arrested.
The offender’s wife, who regularly visited him in prison, said she felt “partly responsible” for his crimes because they were not having sex.
The anonymous judge overseeing the hearing said he accepted her “guilt” for failing to provide “intimate relations”, which he felt would “detrimentally impact her ability to care for her children”.
He also accepted that MH has a “genuine and subsisting relationship” with his two small children, aged three and four, with whom he was allowed up to 12 hours of supervised contact each day.
The judge ruled that deporting him from the country would be “unduly harsh”, due to his family taking a “dim view” of his crimes, claiming the criminal would face “significant difficulties” in his home country.
MH’s appeal was allowed, which means he is legally allowed to stay in the UK despite being on the sex offenders’ register until 2032.
Appeals Judge Judith Gleeson branded the lower court’s decision to let MH stay as “plainly wrong”.
She 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.”
Speaking to The Sun, shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick called this case “disgraceful”.
Shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick called this case “disgraceful”
PA
“The public are right to think that our immigration system is rigged in the interests of people who mean us harm, illegal migrants, against the interests of the British public,” he said.
“We’ve got to change our human rights architecture in this country so we can get these people out of the country as quickly as possible.”
He added that treaties signed half a century ago should not allow rapists, murderers and paedophiles to stay on the streets and in the country.
Reform MP Rupert Lowe weighed in, saying: “My three-step policy solution for dealing with these creatures – deport, deport, deport.”
He claimed the UK should stop sending Pakistan foreign aid if they refused to accept deported rapists and criminals.
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.”
