ES News email The latest headlines in your inbox twice a day Monday - Friday plus breaking news updates Enter your email address Continue Please enter an email address Email address is invalid Fill out this field Email address is invalid You already have an account. Please log in Register with your social account or click here to log in I would like to receive lunchtime headlines Monday - Friday plus breaking news alerts, by email Update newsletter preferences

Black cab rapist John Worboys will stay behind bars after the High Court today backed a challenge by victims against his release.

In a landmark judgment, three senior judges ruled that the Parole Board’s decision to free the serial sex attacker had been taken improperly.

The board’s chairman, Nick Hardwick, has been sacked after being told by the Justice Secretary that mistakes in the case had made his position untenable.

The High Court’s decision means that Worboys, 60, who was due to be freed within days, will stay behind bars, potentially for many more years.

One of the two victims who brought the challenge and was in court to hear the decision said: “I’m thrilled. We have the right result.

"But I’m also angry that I have been put in a position where we keep having to come back to court. He should stay in prison.”

Mayor Sadiq Khan, who brought a separate challenge to the Parole Board’s decision, said: “The shocking failures in the way John Worboys’ victims were treated has damaged confidence in the criminal justice system and the time has come for more transparency surrounding decisions to let offenders out of prison.”

A new Parole Board hearing will now have to be convened. It could still decide to free Worboys. But it could also use the evidence cited in the High Court to find he is still a danger and order his continued detention for an indefinite period.

Announcing today’s decision, judge Sir Brian Leveson said the Parole Board had been wrong to base its assessment of Worboys only on his explanation of the 19 offences for which he was convicted, instead of the 100-plus allegations made against him.

“I’m thrilled. We have the right result. But I’m also angry that I have been put in a position where we keep having to come back to court. Victims should not be put in this position. He should stay in prison.” Victim of John Worboys

Sir Brian said it should “have undertaken further inquiry into the circumstances of his offending and, in particular, the extent to which the limited way in which he has described his offending may undermine his overall credibility and reliability.

"That is so even in relation to the offences of which he was convicted, let alone any other offending.”

The judgment follows weeks of controversy, prompted by the Parole Board’s announcement in January that Worboys had been cleared for release at a secret hearing presided over by three of its experts.

The former black cab driver was given an indeterminate prison sentence in 2009 after being convicted at Croydon crown court of 19 offences, including one rape and several other sex attacks, against 12 women.

Police believe he had more than 100 victims and that his offending, which he carried out after offering spiked drinks to passengers, had been going on for several years before the crimes for which he was convicted.

Worboys has served just over 10 years and the Parole Board’s experts decided it was no longer necessary to detain him for public protection.

They used assessments by three psychologists and concluded that he had been “open and honest” about his offending and was sufficiently reformed to be safe to release if strict licence conditions were imposed.

But at a two-day High Court hearing this month, lawyers for the two victims, known as DSD and NBV, and Mr Khan accused the Parole Board of reaching an irrational decision based on flawed evidence.

Barrister Phillippa Kaufmann, for the victims, said that rather than being honest, Worboys had given a false explanation of his offending that had been carefully crafted to secure his release.

The judgment explained: Sir Brian Leveson said he was upholding the victims’ challenge because the Parole Board should “have undertaken further inquiry into the circumstances of his offending and, in particular, the extent to which the limited way in which he has described his offending may undermine his overall credibility and reliability. “That is so even in relation to the offences of which he was convicted, let alone any other offending.” Sir Brian said that a new Parole Board panel, staffed by different experts, would now be convened to reassess Worboys’ fate.

In particular, she said that he had lied when he claimed that the trigger for his offending was a split from his girlfriend in 2005, when in fact he had carried out attacks three years earlier.

She also told the court that Worboys, now known as John Radford, had kept diaries in prison in which he wrote about a “natural, primal instinct” in being attracted to scantily clad women.

She said he continued to pose a danger to women of any age.

The Parole Board chairman, Mr Hardwick, today released a departure letter to the Justice Secretary, David Gauke.

In it, he praises the “courage and tenacity” of the women who brought the legal challenge and says that he will not “pass the buck”.

However, he said his dismissal raised “very troubling questions” about the board’s independence which Parliament should address.

Today’s ruling will raise questions about Mr Gauke’s judgment. He decided not to join the victims and the Mayor in challenging the Parole Board’s decision after receiving legal advice that he would be unlikely to win.

In a statement, Mr Gauke said: “I accept Professor Hardwick’s resignation and believe this is the correct decision in light of the serious failings outlined in today’s judgment.”