Victim support groups today attacked Australian authorities for deciding to deport a British paedophile, regarded as one of the country's worst child abusers.

UK-born Robert Excell, 66, who moved to Australia when he was ten, will be flown back to Britain as soon as he has the necessary travel documents - probably within days.

Excell, who has spent has spent 37 years in an Australian jail for a string of sex attacks on boys, will be met on arrival by Special Branch officers.

He will be forced to sign the sex offenders register, but after that he will free.

However, he could be placed under surveillance or made the subject of a Sexual Offences Prevention Order (SOPO) to prevent him from being alone with children or from getting close to a school playground.

Western Australia's attorney general Jim McGinty yesterday defended the decision to release Excell, despite admitting that he posed an unacceptable risk to children in his state.

The decision was made in part, he said, because of Excell's poor health and age, and support from his wife, Maxine.

But the move was widely condemned by campaigners in Britain, who said Excell should never be freed.

Norman Brennan, director of the Victims of Crime Trust, said: "This individual poses a maximum danger to children and has committed crime after crime after crime of the worst degrading types of paedophilia.

"It's clear as night follows day as long as this individual's got blood running through his veins he poses a danger. The most appropriate sentence for him is to remain in Western Australia."

Shy Keenan, founder of Phoenix Survivors, a support group for the victims of child sexual abuse, said: "He should spend the rest of his life in jail."

Tink Palmer, director of the Stop It Now! campaign against child abuse, said: "Just transporting him from one country to another makes him no less dangerous," she said. "This does not solve the problem - he should be dealt with in Australia.

Excell, who emigrated to Australia as a child but never became a citizen, has spent 37 of the past 39 years in prison.

He has four separate convictions for sodomising and molesting young boys, dating back to 1965.

Since then he has been paroled three times and reoffended on all three occasions. After being released in 1973 he had raped a nine-year-old boy and when he got out again in 1977 he raped a 13-year-old boy.

Excell will return to the UK with his wife, who has reportedly "sold up everything" to go with him.

Asked yesterday if she thought he would offend again, she said: "I don't believe he could ever ... I don't think he would even think about it."