SERIAL rapist Michael Fox - who was charged with kidnapping Bridport Downes Syndrome woman Jo Ramsden - has been moved from Broadmoor to a branch of the Priory Clinic, it emerged this week.

It is also claimed that child kidnapper Paul Burton, 34, who abducted a seven-year-old girl from her caravan at West Bay and held her captive for 56 hours in August 1990, is to be the subject of a similar transfer.

News that violent and "evil" criminals are being moved from Broadmoor psychiatric hospital to the "medium secure" institution - Chadwick Lodge, near Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire - has met with outrage.

Fox, 59, a former psychiatric nurse who lived at Charminster, received nine life sentences in 1994 for kidnapping and raping mentally handicapped women.

But he always denied kidnapping Jo Ramsden, 21, from Bridport on April 9 1991. Her body was found in woods near Lyme Regis in March 1992.

A judge at Cardiff Crown Court ordered the kidnapping charge against Fox to lie on the table.

Jo was the daughter of Bridport shopkeepers Richard and Angela Ramsden.

Yesterday Mr Ramsden said Fox's transfer to a lower category unit was wrong .

"I think he should stay there (Broadmoor)," he said. "It was not just our daughter."

Chadwick Lodge is part of the Priory Group of hospitals. It is owned by Priory Healthcare whose portfolio includes 16 psychiatric hospitals across Britain.

Priory Healthcare also includes the clinic at Roehampton, South West London, where dozens of celebrities have sought treatment for alcoholism, drug addiction and burn-out. Health sources claimed this week that the cost of treating patients at Chadwick Lodge is more than double the £100,000 a year bill at Broadmoor in Berkshire.

It is claimed that in addition to Fox and another Broadmoor inmate who have already been transferred to Chadwick there are plans for others to follow, including Paul Burton.

Burton, a schizophrenic, grabbed a seven year old girl from her caravan at the haven Holidays site at West Bay as her parents slept.

More than two days later, after a massive nationwide hunt, a uniformed officer stumbled across vital evidence at the site of a tumbledown wooden chalet known as Treetops on the nearby West Cliff estate. And Burton's lair where he had bound and gagged and held the little girl captive was discovered and she was reunited with her family.

Police detective Chief Superintendent Des Donohoe who led the search for the girl later described Burton as "a man touched with evil."

The revelations about the transfers have provoked uproar from victims' groups which said those committed to Broadmoor should stay there.

Dee Warner of Mothers Against Aggression said: "Medium security units are not the place to house killers and rapists. Anyone who has been to Broadmoor is deemed by the courts to be criminally insane. How can it be safe for them to be transferred to somewhere like this?

"They should stay at Broadmoor for life."

This week a Broadmoor spokesman said that only two patients had been transferred to Chadwick. At the very most two patients would be moved a year.

"Chadwick Lodge is a medium secure unit. You cannot leave it unsupervised," he stressed.

"Patients at various stages of their treatment are sent to similar places like it across the country. About 30 to 50 are discharged a year.

"People leave Broadmoor when they are well enough to move on. There is no sense in keeping a patient in that high security environment when they don't need all that high security."

Anyone sent to Chadwick would be there on a trial basis for a period. "If anyone transgressed the rules they would be brought back."