A 71-year-old man convicted of raping an orphaned boy in Albania has been jailed in the UK for befriending families and children without telling them of his past.
Robin Arnold brought the children, all from an immigrant African community in Carlisle, Cumbria, gifts and they called him “Uncle Rob”, a court heard on Tuesday.
Arnold had been jailed for raping a boy aged 13 by a court in Albania in 2010. Before then he had been a subject of a Guardian investigation into a child sex abuse scandal at a Christian missionary orphanage in Tirana.
Arnold, then described as a 56-year-old salesman from Cromer in Norfolk, had been a helper at the His Children orphanage, which cared for 40 abandoned children and babies.
He was extradited from the UK to stand trial in Albania. A prosecutor at Carlisle crown court said Arnold was sentenced in 2010 to 15 and half years in jail for the rape of a 13-year-old boy.
Carlisle crown court heard that Arnold was released from prison in 2020 and over the Christmas period of 2022 and early this year he began befriending immigrant African families in the city.
He offered help with deliveries and other things and brought the children gifts. They started calling him Uncle Rob, prosecutor Ben Stanley said.
Arnold at no stage told the families about his past or his conviction for a child sex offence, which was a breach of sexual harm prevention orders.
Jailing Arnold to 20 months, Judge Nicholas Barker said the defendant would have been well aware of the orders and their rules.
The judge said the “kindest and most generous” view of why Arnold breached the orders was that he knew the families would not have anything to do with him if they knew his history.
A more suspicious view is that Arnold did what he did because he knew there were children there and that he still had sexual predatory instincts, the judge said.
He said Arnold was not a “frank and remorseful” person and was someone who hid behind “half-truths and lies”.
Carlisle crown court heard that Arnold also had two convictions of indecent assault involving minors dating from 1987 and 1994.
Arnold, from High Hesket in Cumbria, appeared at court via a video link from Durham prison. He had pleaded guilty at a magistrates court at an earlier date to four breaches of sexual harm prevention orders.
Arnold’s defence barrister Kim Whittlestone told the court that Arnold still denied the offence he was convicted of in Albania.
She said her client wanted to help the families and was motivated by his Christian beliefs. “He wants to lead a helpful, law-abiding life,” she said.
A spokesperson for Cumbria police said: “We work hard to monitor and manage people who are subject to such orders as part of our work to protect the public. As in this case, we will find out if people breach the terms of these preventative orders – and we will do all we can to ensure they are held accountable for their offending.”
