Child pornography - Sentences must fit the crime

THE inadequacy of sentences handed down by the courts in child pornography cases is a cause for alarm given the nature of this most heinous of crimes.

As the nation learned from a series of horrific reports, failure to crack down on perverts, whether they are priests, brothers, nuns, family members, friends or associates, simply opens the way for them to go on with their depraved activities.

The gravity of this scenario, and the vulnerability of victims, ought to be sufficient to convince the judiciary that the full weight of the law must be brought down on those, especially the creators and addicts of child pornography, who prey on innocent children.

Regrettably, that’s not happening according to the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. The ISPCC claims that numerous child pornography offenders have been given suspended sentences in spite of possessing thousands of images of abuse.

So concerned are parents about the explosion of pornography on the internet, where the appetites of perverts are fuelled by millions of abusive images, that complaints relating to this phenomenon significantly outnumber all the combined complaints relating to illegal conduct on websites where immorality is rife.

Given the sheer scale of recent scandals, is it any wonder the “rare and short” prison offences handed down by judges in such cases have tended to portray Ireland internationally as a country where the respect for, and protection of, children are undermined to an alarming degree. In one recent case, a four-year suspended jail sentence was handed down to a defendant who possessed 15,000 images described by a senior garda as among the worst he had ever seen. While, in another, a man who possessed 1,000 images and videos of children, including some as young as seven being raped, received a suspended sentence.

Further tainting Ireland’s image, along with that of the Catholic Church, bishops named in the Ryan Report on the institutional cover-up of paedophile priests in the Archdiocese of Dublin were notoriously reluctant to fall on their croziers. There is every chance that more bishops in other dioceses will face similar charges. They should all go.

In the absence of a tougher sentencing policy, and given the addictive nature of pornography, criminal perverts can be expected to continue the appalling abuse of children, and those who collect this kind of material will go on downloading images and videos of children being raped and cruelly abused.

These are compelling reasons why the Irish Government should come into line with other countries where a tougher stance is being taken and immediately review legislation dealing with the creation or possession of abusive images of children.

As ISPCC national advocacy manager Mary Nicholson has succinctly put it, the Government must take whatever steps are needed to convince the world that here in Ireland child pornography is seen for what it is – “clear abuse of children, a depraved crime which should have serious consequences”.