"it would be unduly harsh for the children to be without their father.”
A Pakistani man who was jailed for child sex offences escaped deportation because it would “harm” his two children.
The man, who was granted anonymity by an immigration court, had been banned from living with his children since he was convicted of trying to get three “barely pubescent” girls to engage in sex and jailed for 18 months.
But a lower tribunal judge ruled that he should not be sent back to Pakistan as it would be “unduly harsh for the children to be without their father”.
The Home Office appealed the decision and was backed by an upper tribunal judge Judith Gleeson who set aside the ruling, criticising it as “contrary to the evidence, plainly wrong and rationally insupportable”.
The case is ongoing.
After coming to the UK to join his wife in 2018, the man was granted leave to remain.
In March 2021, he began targeting “pre-pubescent” girls aged 12, 13 and 14. The court was told that they were in fact decoys and it was believed to be a police undercover operation.
This continued for 18 months until his arrest in August 2022 and subsequent imprisonment in December.
He was also made subject to a deportation order by the then-Home Secretary Suella Braverman.
The man was sentenced to 18 months in prison and during sentencing, the judge said he was “in denial” about the offences, leading to the conclusion that there was “very little prospect” of rehabilitation.
The judge also said his imprisonment would not significantly impact his wife or children as he was “not living in the family home for obvious reasons”.
He was also placed on the sex offenders’ register and banned from using social media to contact any underage girls.
Despite this judgement, the lower immigration tribunal judge who heard his deportation appeal said it would be “unduly harsh” to separate him from his children, whom he was being allowed to see for up to 12 hours a day under “supervised contact”.
The judge also “placed weight” on the wife’s claim that she felt partly responsible for his online grooming of the girls because she had not been able to have sex with him after being admitted to hospital for Covid treatment.
The court was told: “Her guilt would be an additional burden and would detrimentally impact her ability to care for her children, albeit not at a level requiring social services intervention.”
The judge ruled: “In light of the above matters considered cumulatively, I am satisfied that it would be unduly harsh for the children to be without their father.”
However, upper tribunal judge Ms Gleeson supported the Home Office’s appeal against the judgement, saying:
“The first-tier judge’s findings of fact and credibility are contrary to the evidence, plainly wrong, and rationally insupportable.”
She said the judge had failed to take account of the strength of the sentencing judge’s remarks, adding:
“His characterisation of these 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, and/or a new mother, does not explain why the claimant felt the need to engage with barely pubescent girl children online.
“The absence of marital relations is no excuse and should not have been given weight in the judge’s reasoning.”
She referred the case back to the lower-tier tribunal to be reconsidered.
A Home Office spokesman said: “Foreign nationals who commit heinous crimes 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.
“Since the election, we’ve removed 2,580 foreign criminals, a 23 per cent increase on the same period 12 months prior.”
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