Jamaican paedophile allowed to enter UK | UK | News
An immigrant pedophile has been allowed to enter the UK after it was ruled that stopping him would violate his human rights. 43-year-old Oniel Spence was previously imprisoned in the USA for sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl.
The Jamaican immigrant has applied to enter the UK in 2023 to join his wife and child, who are British citizens. Although his initial application was blocked by the Home Office, Spence was granted permission to enter the UK after appealing. This was despite him having previously been sentenced to three years in prison for a sexual offense against a girl when he was 25. Spence served 18 months of his sentence in the United States before being deported to Jamaica.
As reported by Daily MailHis lawyers argued that preventing him from entering the UK violated Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The article guarantees the individual’s right to respect for his “private and family life, home and correspondence”.
Although then Home Secretary Yvette Cooper appealed the decision, immigration court judges Madeleine Reeds and Nathan Moxon rejected her claims. Current Home Affairs Minister Shabana Mahmood then submitted another case to the Court of Appeal.
Senior judges overturned the initial decision earlier this month, calling it “perverse”. There will now be a rehearing, meaning Spence could win the case at a future trial.
Spence was convicted in 2018 of “lewd and lascivious conduct with a victim under the age of 16” at a nightclub in Saint Lucie, Florida. On the first appeal, judges found that he “had a sexual interest in children and had established relationships with children in the past.”
Spence has never lived in the UK, but his wife and daughter are both British citizens. They have always lived in the UK and have maintained contact with the pedophile by phone and on holidays abroad.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said: “This is a deeply perverse example of unelected judges trying to overrule elected ministers to allow a Jamaican child sex offender into the UK after the US rightly threw him out. “The tyranny of the judiciary continues.
“We have seen foreign murderers, rapists, drug dealers and pedophiles allowed to remain in the UK by judges using ECHR interpretations that go against the will of Parliament and common sense.
“Therefore, as I announced this week, we must leave the ECHR, abolish the immigration tribunal and end the courts’ jurisdiction over immigration. Deciding who enters or stays in the UK should be in the hands of our elected parliament, not unelected judges.”
A Home Office spokesman said: “We will do everything we can to continue to appeal this case. We strongly believe that this individual’s presence in the UK is not in the public interest.”
“We will not allow foreign criminals to abuse our laws. The Home Secretary has been clear that anyone moving to the UK must have a clean criminal record.”
