The Home Office must pay the family of a Brighton doctor £130,000 after they suffered a terrifying ordeal as a result of official failings.
The parliamentary ombudsman has also ordered the Home Office to apologise to the family of Alison Hewitt.
Dr Hewitt suffered a sustained campaign of stalking and harassment after ending her relationship with Canadian bank auditor Al Amin Dhalla.
He tried to burn down her mother and stepfather’s home before Sussex Police tracked him down to the hospital where Dr Hewitt worked.
Officers found weapons including a loaded crossbow and a big knife in his hire car along with a doctor’s white coat and stethoscope. Dhalla, 44, also had a van with a cage fitted in the back.
His campaign of terror was possible, the ombudsman said, because the Home Office had made serious mistakes.
Dr Hewitt’s mother Pamela found evidence of Dhalla’s violent past and alerted the Home Office but officials failed to act.
The ombudsman, Dame Julie Mellor, published an anonymised report yesterday called Home Office failures put a family in danger.
Injustice
She said: “I am laying this report before Parliament … because the story it tells of maladministration and injustice is so important.
“It matters for the public and for officials working to protect the public from harm.
“The complaint we investigated was about the Home Office’s response to a mother’s fears in November 2010.
“She had discovered that a Canadian man living with her daughter had lied about his overseas criminal past when he came to the UK to live and work.
“She feared that the man would harm her daughter and herself. She believed that the UK’s immigration laws, enforced by the Home Office, would help keep them safe.
“She was right to be afraid and the Home Office failed to help her.
“Our work shows the serious mistakes made by the Home Office before and after the man’s arrest for crimes against the family.
“It shows how maladministration by the Home Office prevented them from helping the family in time and then led the Home Office to deny responsibility for the effect of their mistakes.
