A New Zealand-born criminal living in Australia has won a battle against deportation after authorities tried to kick him out for racking up 400 convictions, Australian media has reported.
Carl Stafford, who has lived in Melbourne for 30 years, was jailed in 2003 for slashing a man's face in an unprovoked attack on a tram.
He this month beat a deportation order at the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT), which ruled that the Australian government had failed him, the Herald Sun reported.
The tribunal heard how he had a difficult upbringing after moving to the country at the age of 3, with his prostitute mother raising him in brothels, and developing a heroin habit in his early 20s.
The AAT said Australia must take responsibility for letting Stafford down, and refused the deportation order, the paper reported.
"Had child welfare agencies intervened, the applicant's drug abuse and offending from an early age may not have eventuated," tribunal senior member John Handley wrote in his judgement.
"Much of his offending was impulsive and connected with his poor mental health. The Australian community should bear some responsibility for the absence of intervention and should not, in my view, dismiss the applicant by returning him to his place of birth."
Stafford had 400 convictions, mostly for theft and burglary, the Herald Sun said.The tribunal heard that Stafford, who left his victim with permanent facial scars after the 2003 tram attack, moved to the country in the late 1970s with his mother.
He moved around five different schools in the Melbourne areas of Richmond and Collingwood during his primary and early secondary education, before being enrolled in an alternative school, which did not feed him properly and allowed students to smoke cigarettes.
By age 13 he was involved in petty theft and marijuana, and by 22 he lived next door to a heroin dealer, which led to an addiction.
