Police 'failed to investigate' UK paedophile who 'abused hundreds of children' in Bulgaria

The Metropolitan Police has been accused of a 'dereliction of duty' for failing to investigate a British paedophile who fled to Bulgaria to abuse more children.

A former chief prosecutor said he fears that convicted paedophile Daniel Erickson-Hull, 46, may have abused children as young as ten in Bulgaria since leaving the UK.

Erickson-Hull, from London, was jailed in 2017 for making and possessing hundreds of indecent images of children.

But after his release later that year, he fled the country and went to Bulgaria.

He was required to sign the sex offenders’ register and was barred from travelling abroad without notifying the authorities, but he ignored both conditions.

The Metropolitan Police issued a European Arrest Warrant seeking his extradition back to the UK, but Bulgaria refused to send him home, the BBC reported.

Erickson-Hull has been living in the deprived Roma neighbourhood of Nadezdha in the city of Sliven, which he began visiting in 2015.

He has been posing as a pastor and youth worker, but the BBC said it has heard child sexual abuse allegations against him that span more than five years.

BBC Radio 4’s File on 4 programme said witnesses had reported Erickson-Hull to the Metropolitan Police.

Dawn Gibbs, a former volunteer in Bulgaria from Houston, Texas, told File on 4 she walked in on Erickson-Hull in bed with a group of boys in 2019.

She said about 15 children told her they were being abused by Erickson-Hull.

She told the programme: "This young man interrupts the conversation to say, 'We're having sexual relations with Daniel.' And I just stopped. And I looked at him… and I said, 'What?'

"The youngest boy who made the allegation would be around 10," she said.

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Gibbs told the BBC she contacted the Metropolitan Police about the allegations but did not receive a reply.

The force can investigate child sex abuse committed by British offenders abroad through Section 72 of the Sexual Offences Act.

Nazir Afzal, a former chief crown prosecutor for North West England, accused the Metropolitan Police of a “dereliction of duty”.

He told File on 4: "This is horrific industrial level sexual abuse.

"It would not surprise me if we're talking about potentially hundreds of children abused by this suspect.

"The police's statement is a dereliction of duty when it comes to a British citizen whom we've already convicted, whom we've allowed to leave the country, who appears to be abusing children on a wholesale industrial scale in a very vulnerable community in Bulgaria.

"The police here have a duty to investigate this thoroughly."

The BBC said Erickson-Hull's sister, Anna, 43, gave the Metropolitan Police access to her brother’s web search history, which she said was filled with searches for child sex abuse.

A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police told Yahoo News UK: “Detectives from the North East Jigsaw Unit remain keen to hear from anyone with information as to the whereabouts of Daniel Erickson-Hull, who is wanted on recall to prison.

“He is believed to have left the UK in July 2017.

“Officers continue to liaise with domestic and international partner agencies.”

In 2019, a BBC journalist for File on 4 travelled to Nadezdha and confronted Erickson-Hull.

It resulted in Bulgarian police raiding his home and charging him with sexually abusing eight boys, the BBC said.

However, the case collapsed after victims withdrew their statements following protests from some members of the Roma community who called for his release.

File on 4: The Paedophile Preacher will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 at 8pm on Tuesday.