John Worboys will receive round-the-clock protection costing £300,00 a year if he is released from prison
Black cab rapist John Worboys will get round-the-clock protection costing £300,000 a year if he is released from prison.
Probation chiefs have found the 60-year-old predator – Britain’s most prolific sex offender – a special hostel to live in amid concerns for his safety.
He will also be assigned two people to guard him 24/7 from possible vigilante attacks if a bid to block his freedom fails.
Victims of the former taxi driver, who is thought to have attacked more than 100 women, last night expressed fury on hearing of his treatment.
One said: ‘Worboys’ release is a betrayal and an insult to his victims, who all suffered horrendous attacks. We still live with what he has done to us but the Government will pay hundreds of thousands to protect him. How is that justice?’ Worboys was jailed indefinitely, with a minimum term of eight years, in 2009 for drugging and sexually assaulting women passengers.
The former stripper was convicted of 19 offences relating to 12 women but police have linked the prolific offender to more than 100 attacks.
Fury erupted in January after the Parole Board ruled that the ex-London cab driver no longer posed a threat to the public and directed that he should be released from top-security HMP Wakefield.
Two of his victims are bringing a judicial review which will decide if the Parole Board was correct to grant his release.
Victims of the former taxi driver, who is thought to have attacked more than 100 women, last night expressed fury on hearing of his treatment
He remains in prison pending the full hearing on March 13 after the High Court ruled a temporary bar on his freedom should be extended.
But the National Probation Service, which monitors the most serious offenders, especially those convicted of the most horrific crimes, had been ‘working round the clock’ in the expectation that he will walk out of jail.
He will be placed in an approved hostel for serious sexual and violent offenders who are leaving jail.
The rapist would be barred from London, where many of his victims live, and forced to live under the most stringent conditions.
He would not be allowed outside alone and be watched closely after a ‘credible threat to his safety’ was identified, according to the Sunday Mirror.
Worboys arrives at Sutton Magistrates Court ahead of a preliminary hearing into his rape trial in 2009 (left) and the ‘rape kit’ he used to drug his victims (right)
His freedoms will be controlled by curfews, regular drug and alcohol testing and room searches.
Anyone breaking the terms of their release or conditions imposed on them while living in a hostel can be recalled to prison.
A National Probation Service source told the Sunday Mirror: ‘Officials have been working 24/7 to work out where Worboys will go if he is freed. It has caused a lot of anger.
‘There has been so much focus on Worboys that there’s a concern staff members haven’t been able to pay enough attention to others. The Probation Service has now found a hostel willing to accept him.
‘The threat to his safety is so real that two members of staff will monitor him 24/7. This will come at great expense and could cost up to £300,000 a year. He will also be the subject of the strictest licence conditions.’ Worboys will be under the strictest licence conditions since the release of Learco Chindamo in 2010, who was just 15 when he knifed headmaster Philip Lawrence to death outside a London school.
He was convicted in 2009 of one rape, five sex assaults, one assault bid and 12 drugging charges.
He used a ‘rape kit’ complete with spiked champagne to drug his victims in the back of his black cab before he launched his sickening assaults.
Reports suggest he could yet be charged with new offences after a number of women came forward to report attacks.
A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: ‘It is for the independent Parole Board to decide on licence conditions.’