A serial sex offender has had his deportation from the UK halted by a judge - because he said the Home Office should have asked him how he felt about his offending.
South African national Phile Ngema, 28, has been convicted of four indecent exposures, failing to obey community orders and has been subject of a sex offenders notice for 15 years.
During his most recent crime in 2018 he overtook his victim as she was walking through a park before waiting for her, staring at her as he exposed himself and carried out a sex act.
She told police 'He was looking at her straight in the eye' and that she thought he 'wanted her to see what he was doing'
But the Bristol-based offender won his appeal against a tribunal ruling which decided he should not be allowed to stay in the county.
Despite the seriousness of his crimes Upper Tribunal Judge Declan O'Callaghan said the Home Office – referred to as the respondent in his judgement – had not cross-examined Ngema about the proceedings and his views on his crimes.
He told the Immigration and Asylum Chamber at Field House, London that it meant the judge at that original hearing made an error in law by concluding he was a 'persistent offender'.
Judge O'Callaghan said: 'Unusually the respondent decided not to cross examine either the appellant or his witnesses before the First-tier Tribunal
Phile Ngema, 28, has been convicted in court of four indecent exposures since 2012
He is currently on the sex offenders' register after a series of crimes in the south west
On August 9, 2018, he targeted a woman just after 8.10am in Bristol's pretty Perrett Park
'It would not be appropriate for this Tribunal when considering materiality to consider issues upon which the appellant was not given a fair opportunity to comment on matters now said to be wholly adverse to him.
'I make the following observation with respect to the decision of the respondent not to cross examine the witnesses before the First-tier Tribunal, a decision said to have been made on the purported basis that there was nothing controversial in their evidence.
'It is striking that the appellant provides very little detail as to his conviction in 2018 beyond asserting that he pleaded not guilty.
'Whilst complaining that the victim changed her witness statement, there is no confirmation in the appellant's witness statement as to his attending a trial and being found guilty.
'I am surprised that the appellant was not cross-examined on his continued denial of the offence. Nor was there any engagement with the appellant as to how such denial impacts upon his ability to address sexual preoccupation and deviant fantasies linked to voyeurism.'
Ngema's convictions stretch back as far as June 8, 2012 where he was handed a community order at South Somerset and Mendip Magistrates
