A DANGEROUS paedophile who has served 37 years in prison for attacking young boys is to be deported to Britain after being released from jail in Australia.

Robert Excell, 66, is to be deported from Australia as a condition of his release from prison where has spent more than half his life for raping children.

Victims’ groups in Britain protested yesterday at the move which will take place as soon as Excell has been provided with the necessary travel documents.

Excell, a British citizen, moved to Australia when he was 10 but has spent 37 years in jails for a series of sex attacks on boys.

He will be met on arrival in Britain by Special Branch officers and will have to sign the sex offenders register, but after that he will be free. He could be placed under surveillance or made the subject of a sexual offences prevention order to stop him being alone with children or getting close to a school playground.

Jim McGinty, attorney- general in Western Australia, defended the decision to release Excell, despite admitting that he posed an unacceptable risk to children.

The decision was made in part because of Excell’s poor health and age, and because he has support from his wife, Maxine, who married him while he was in jail. She said this week that she was still not confident enough to leave her husband alone with her seven grandchildren.

The decision to release Excell was widely condemned by campaigners in Britain, who said Excell should never be freed. Tink Palmer, director of the Stop It Now! campaign against child abuse, described the decision to deport Excell as ethically wrong.

“Just transporting him from one country to another makes him no less dangerous,” she said. “This does not solve the problem — he should be dealt with in Australia.

“He will need considerable supervision in the community and surveillance to maintain the safety of children, wherever he is living.”

Shy Keenan, the founder of Phoenix Survivors, a support group for the victims of child sexual abuse, said: “He should spend the rest of his life in jail.

“We want to know the exact legal process they will use to place a man with a spent Australian conviction on the sex offenders register and whether he will be monitored as much as he clearly needs to be.”

Excell, who emigrated to Australia as a child but never became a citizen, has spent 37 of the past 39 years in prison.He has four separate convictions for sodomising and molesting young boys, dating back to 1965.

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