A convicted sex attacker raped and violently molested two young girls as he fought deportation on human rights grounds.
Asylum-seeker William Danga, 39, subjected the children to appalling abuse before and after he was jailed for raping a teenager.
One was just four years old when the Congolese national forced himself on her before heading out to preach as a Jehovah’s Witness.
Yesterday a judge said it was ‘remarkable’ that the sex attacker was not thrown out of Britain after being jailed for ten years for raping a 16-year-old girl a decade ago.
Officials were ordered to deport Danga at the end of his sentence but he frustrated their efforts after losing his passport.
He was then freed on immigration bail while he challenged the move on the grounds that he had a right to a ‘family life’ because he had children with a young girlfriend.
The case is the latest in a string of outrages in which dangerous foreign criminals have used European laws to continue living here.
Just two months ago Nigerian rapist Akindoyin Akinshipe, 24, escaped deportation after European judges ruled he had a right to a ‘private life’ in Britain.
Like many others, he used Article 8 of the Human Rights Act to claim the right to a ‘family life’.
Home Secretary Theresa May wants to scale back the use of the controversial clause in a bid to wrest back more control over our borders.
Danga was convicted of rape and a string of other sexual offences yesterday after a five-day trial at Croydon Crown Court, and jailed for 15 years.
His victims, now aged 14 and 12, were forced to relive their ordeals as they gave evidence to the jury via video link. The elder girl was first abused in 2000, when she was four.
Danga repeatedly attacked her before church meetings, but she escaped his clutches when he was sent from South East London to live in an immigration hostel in Portsmouth a year later.
It was there that Danga was convicted of violently raping the 16-year-old girl in her bedroom after she tried to end their friendship.
He was convicted of rape and jailed for ten years, with the judge ordering him to be deported on his release.
But in 2006 he was able to return to South East London after serving half his sentence, and began his legal battle to stay in Britain.
He began sexually abusing his first victim again before raping and molesting the second girl, who was just seven.
She said Danga wore a smart brown suit and would leave after the attacks to knock on doors and teach people about the Bible.
The younger victim told officers Danga would entice her into the bedroom by playing her pop hits including ‘Don’t Cha’ by the Pussycat Dolls on his mobile phone.
Describing one attack, she said: ‘I didn’t really like it but I didn’t say anything because of the music. I didn’t want it to happen again.’
Asked why she did not tell her parents, she added: ‘It crossed my mind a few times but then it was like, I felt like really bad because I felt it was all my fault.’
Yesterday Judge Nicholas Ainley jailed Danga of Beckenham, South East London, and ordered that he be deported on his release.
He said it was ‘astonishing’ he had been allowed to remain in Britain after being freed the first time in 2006.
Unemployed Danga, who has two young children with his girlfriend Carla, whom he met when she was 18, shouted abuse at relatives of the two girls as he was led to the cells.
Last year around 200 foreign criminals won the right to stay in this country using Article 8, the right to a ‘private and family life’.
They included failed asylum seeker Aso Mohammed Ibrahim, who ran over 12-year-old Amy Houston and left her to ‘die like a dog’. He has fathered two children here.
Tory ministers have pledged to replace the Human Rights Act – which enshrines the European Convention on Human Rights into British law – with a UK Bill of Rights, but they have been opposed by their Lib Dem coalition partners.
A UK Border Agency spokesman said: ‘We will seek to remove this individual as soon as he has finished his sentence. In 2010 we deported 5,235 foreign national prisoners from the UK.’