Post by Focus on Jun 20, 2013 15:39:57 GMT
A British paedophile freed from prison in the UK last year has been arrested in Morocco after allegedly trying to rape a six-year-old girl.
Robert Bill vanished after emigrating to Spain to exploit a loophole in the sex offenders register despite a police warning he was a 'high risk' offender.
Tracked down : Robert Bill vanished after emigrating to Spain to exploit a loophole in the sex offenders register despite a police warning he was a 'high risk' offender
Spanish detectives were already hunting him for the attempted abduction of a 12-year-old girl in a Costa del Sol resort weeks after he started his new life in the sun.
Last night he was back behind bars in the northern Moroccan port city of Tetouan after locals stopped him raping his latest target.
He is said to have confessed to two other rapes in the north African country since fleeing there last November when Spanish police identified him as the beast who tried to bundle a schoolgirl into a car near Malaga.
Bill, from St Asaph, Denbighshire, Wales, left Britain last August after finishing two prison sentences for crimes including attempted abduction and indecent assault and moving to the Costa del Sol.
He informed police in the UK he was emigrating - but slipped off the radar after telling supervision officers he would find accommodation 'upon arrival.'
Spanish police issued an international arrest warrant after the attempted abduction in Velez-Malaga last November.
Former teacher and playground designer Bill is expected to be tried in Morocco before being extradited to Spain.
His arrest is bound to raise questions about the way the sex offenders register works.
Costa del Sol, Malaga : Bills rented a cottage in a remote mountain hamlet an hour's drive from Malaga after jetting to Spain - and later got an office job at an estate agent's
North Wales Police have confirmed they informed the Spanish authorities when he left Britain - but were powerless to force them to do regular checks on his whereabouts or make him register his new foreign address.
He rented a two-bed cottage in a remote mountain hamlet an hour's drive from Malaga after jetting to Spain - and later got an office job at an estate agent's on the coast.
Locals told how he drove a Peugeot 106 with a 'baby on board' sticker in the back window despite not having a young child.
He disappeared after telling expats he befriended at a pub he had to return to Britain for emergency treatment for a throat problem.
Days later Spanish police revealed they were hunting him after obtaining CCTV footage of him bundling a 12-year-old Romanian youngster into his car.
The schoolgirl only escaped the sex pervert's clutches after escaping through an unlocked door before he sped off with her.
He was arrested in Tetouan on Tuesday after being chased down by locals who heard his six-year-old victim screaming and handed him over to police.
Local reports said he had been questioned - and already confessed - to a rape in the same city and another in the popular tourist town of Chefchaouen an hour's drive south.
Bill, a Jehovah's Witness, was convicted in March 2009 of trying to abduct a five-year-old girl as he cruised around a council estate in Holywell, Wrexham in June 2007.
He was also found guilty of downloading child porn on his computer and indecently assaulting an eight-year-old girl.
He appealed against his conviction - but changed his plea to guilty shortly before a retrial and admitted breaching a Sex Offences Prevention Order (SOPO) by viewing videos of children on YouTube while on bail.
Recorder of Chester, Judge Elgan Edwards, jailed him for two years for the attempted abduction and six months for breaching the sex offences order.
He said at the time: 'The public may have some consolation that when you are released you will be monitored by North Wales Police officers who will help you, and more importantly the children of North Wales will be protected.'
A spokesman for North Wales Police said after he fled Spain: 'We were managing Robert Edward Bill after his release from prison until he informed us he was moving to Spain in August to look for work.
'We took steps to inform the Spanish authorities.'
A source close to the case said: 'Bill flew to Malaga from Birmingham on August 9 2012 after filling in a form saying he was moving to Spain to look for work and would find accommodation 'on arrival.'
'He committed no offence under the terms of the sex offenders register and did what nine out of ten sex offenders do in the same circumstances.
'The law doesn't stipulate we are obliged to inform foreign agencies but on this occasion we did.
'Police in the UK make regular unannounced visits to sex offenders to make sure they are living where they say they are.
'We can't oblige foreign police forces to do the same, especially when sex offenders are under no obligation to register their addresses when they go abroad as they are in Britain. It does seem to us a loophole in the law.'
Bill's son Stephen, 27, from Preston, said at the time: 'I think it is ridiculous that European law allows him the right to build a new life in Spain around people who know nothing about him or his past.
'My father is a dangerous man and in north Wales everyone knows about his convictions.
'But over in Spain expats had no idea. It just shouldn't have happened.'
I am amazed that these loopholes exist and even more amazed that this predator was allowed to slip through one of them!! - Why wasn't 'it' locked up in Britain, it doesn't take a fcking genius to see that no child is safe from this 'thing??' - Fx
