The family of the 14-year-old sexual assault victim of illegal migrant Hadush Kebatu have accused the leftist Labour Party government, the British police, the UK justice system, and Chelmsford prison of failing their family and the nation by releasing the child molester back onto the streets.
The release and subsequent manhunt for the Ethiopian national descended into farcical levels of ineptitude over the weekend, with the convicted child predator reportedly having been turned away after attempting to return to prison. He then appeared in CCTV footage in a grey prison tracksuit and carrying a bag emblazoned with avocados in multiple locations across London before police finally detained him on Sunday, the whole affair having taken on a bumbling air of the absurd and widely compared to British comedy character ‘Mr Bean’ by social media users.
Yet the failures of the state to keep a migrant sex offenders secured just a month into his 12-month prison sentence pending deportation was no laughing matter for his 14-year-old victim, who was petrified after her abuser was mistakenly released.
Speaking on Sunday evening, the victim’s father said in a statement read by Epping Forrest council member Shane Yerrell that the child was finally beginning to regain some of her confidence after being sexually assaulted by Kebatu in July outside of a migrant hotel. However, he said that his apparently accidental release just five weeks after being sentenced caused her “so much stress and anxiety”.
“She feared seeing him again in the high road and him recognising her. I’m really worried for my daughter’s mental health and well-being because of this assault,” the father explained.
“This man is a real danger to young women and children and for him to be wrongly released and walking the streets freely just four months after carrying out two sexual assaults, only five weeks after being sentenced, all because of a system failure on Friday is unbelievably irresponsible,” he said.
The father added that he and his family “feel massively let down and infuriated by HMP Chelmsford, the police, the justice system and our Labour government. They have all failed. Not just us as a family, but they have failed everyone in the country.”
The victim’s father went on to reveal that he was first informed that his daughter’s abuser had been released after being contacted by a reporter rather than authorities and said that he was “greeted with hostility and disregard” when he contacted the Chelmsford prison seeking answers.
“I really hope that nobody else’s child has to experience what my daughter has,” he said. “I hope he will be deported immediately, as the longer he was roaming the streets, the more threat he posed to women and children of this country.”
Although the sensational government failures involved in the release of Kebatu and the ensuing manhunt captivated the nation, it is apparently not unheard of for prisons to release inmates “in error” in Britain.
According to His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service, 262 prisoners were released by mistake between April 2024 and March 2025 in England and Wales, the BBC reported. This represented over a 127 per cent increase over the previous year, when 115 prisoners were released in error.
Despite the massive increase occurring under the left-wing Labour Party government, which has previously faced criticism for intentionally releasing offenders early to clear jail space, Deputy PM David Lammy attempted to blame the Conservative Party, saying that Labour “inherited a system that was collapsing”.
Lammy said that the government intends to deport Kebatu as soon as this week, as it had intended to do prior to his accidental release while on his way to a removal centre. The government has also pledged to launch an inquiry into the failures that precipitated the release of the child molesting migrant.
The case, which initially sparked a wave of anti-migrant hotel protests throughout England and Wales over the summer, has seemingly reignited the movement, with protests erupting again outside of the Bell Hotel in Epping where Kebatu was being housed at the time of the assault.
While the protests and pressure from local politicians had initially succeeded in obtaining a legal injunction to shut down the hotel as a migrant centre, the Labour government later won on appeal to keep it operational, after arguing that the right of asylum seekers to be housed at taxpayer expense should outweigh local concerns.
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