Zimbabwean paedophile allowed to stay in UK because he would face ‘hostility' back home

Telegraph

14-02-2025

A convicted Zimbabwean paedophile was allowed to stay in Britain because he would face 'hostility' if he was deported back to his home country.
An immigration tribunal judge blocked his deportation to Zimbabwe by the Home Office because it would breach his rights under Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) which prohibits torture, inhuman treatment and degrading punishment.
Sarah Pinder, the judge, accepted his lawyers' claims that, as an openly gay man who had been jailed for more than five years for child sex offences, he was likely to face 'substantial hostility' from the Zimbabwean authorities.
The man was also granted anonymity and known only as RC. He is autistic and deaf, which the court accepted meant he lacked the social skills that would enable him to 'diffuse' any hostility against him.
Judge Pinder rejected an appeal by the Home Office against a lower tribunal ruling in the man's favour, saying that the evidence justified its decision to allow the Zimbabwean to remain in the UK.
The verdict, disclosed in court papers, is the latest case exposed by The Telegraph in which migrants or convicted foreign criminals have used human rights legislation to secure the right to remain in the UK or avoided deportation in controversial circumstances.
They include an Albanian criminal who avoided deportation after claiming his son had an aversion to foreign chicken nuggets, and a Pakistani paedophile, who was jailed for child sex offences but escaped removal from the UK as it would be 'unduly harsh' on his own children.
Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, has already intervened and described a judge's decision to allow a Palestinian family to live in the UK after they applied through a scheme for Ukrainian refugees as 'wrong'.
Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, is working on closing the loophole that allowed the decision but immigration appeals, largely on human rights grounds, could hinder efforts to fast-track returns of more illegal migrants.
Reform UK, which is surging in the polls, has made the handling of immigration a central plank of its attack on the Government and the Conservatives.
The Tories have said that they will be proposing 'radical changes' to human rights laws.
Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, said: 'The ECHR was agreed in 1950 to stop a repeat of the atrocities of Nazi Germany. Now, judges are inventing new definitions of its articles to allow dangerous criminals, in this case a paedophile, to stay in the UK. This is not what we signed up to in 1950.
'The judge has once again ignored our domestic laws in favour of the supposed human rights of a despicable criminal. What if this man abuses children here again? What about the human rights of our children to be protected from him? The human rights farce that prioritises paedophiles ahead of children's safety has to end.'
RC came to Britain in October 2007 at the age of 16 with his mother, a British citizen, and was granted indefinite leave to remain in the UK.
In 2018, he was convicted and jailed for five years and three months for sexual offences against children and distributing and possessing indecent images of children.
The Home Office ordered his deportation in June 2021, but he fought this under Article 3 of the ECHR, arguing that he would face inhumane treatment in Zimbabwe because he was 'a gay white man, who would seek to live his sexual orientation openly, and who is also a convicted sex offender'.
His lawyers argued that his risk of persecution would be increased as a result of his reduced social skills because of his health conditions, including autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, attention deficit disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and deafness.
Zimbabwe still criminalises same-sex sexual activity between men, and those found guilty of having sexual relations can face up to a year in jail.
The Home Secretary appealed an initial verdict in RC's favour and it was heard by Judge Pinder, from the Upper Tribunal Immigration and Asylum Chamber, in December.
She found that owing to his 'disability, being (perceived) gay, white and with a criminal record for child sex offences (once disclosed) will, viewed together, create substantial hostility towards him by the authorities'.
She said that this would 'be compounded by his disabilities limiting his capacity to interact in a way that would diffuse rather than exacerbate the hostility and that consequently, there was a real risk that [he] would be subject to treatment contrary to Article 3'.
Even though the Government said that it would not disclose RC's offences to the Zimbabwean authorities, she added: 'I also consider that the judge's finding that the authorities are likely to discover [his] criminal convictions as a result of their dealings with [him] in the event that he is forcibly removed from the UK was entirely reasonable.'
She said that RC 'would also be at a greater risk on account of his disabilities, namely his deafness and autism, which would reduce his social skills and likely lead him to be open about his sexuality… the judge had also considered that the appellant would likely disclose his convictions with him not appearing to have any sense of the gravity attached to his offending'.
Judge Pinder previously ruled that a Jamaican drug dealer convicted of domestic abuse should be spared deportation because he has a transgender child.
An immigration tribunal was told that the girl only speaks to him, and not her mother, about her gender identity issues.
She also found that the career criminal's mixed race children would have 'unmet emotional needs linked not just to the loss of a parent but to the loss of the parent who represents half of their cultural identity'.
It was therefore judged 'unduly harsh' on them to deport him – even though they witnessed him beating their mother.