"The only money that should be spent on Excell should be on barbed wire fences and prison guards," said a 42-year-old man who was a teenager when Excell targeted him.

The mother of another victim, who was 13 when Excell molested him, said: "We hoped the British Government would keep the heat on him. I am just staggered that money would be wasted this way."

Shy Keenan, chief executive of Phoenix Survivors which helps child abuse victims in Britain, said: "The Government always tells us they are short of funds yet they give a very dangerous sex offender all this money so that he can do God knows what with it."

Excell, whose convictions date back to 1965 when he attacked a seven-year-old boy, was born in Britain but moved to Australia at the age of 10 and never took up citizenship.

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