Your article about Timothy Gardner ('Priest with child sex images avoids prison’ April 3, 2014) incensed me and should anger anyone who reads it.
How can a man who preyed on thousands of victims by looking at indecent images of children have his jail sentence suspended? How he is able to roam around whatever community he so chooses (albeit with conditions attached) without actually feeling the true extent of which he has done.
Punishment should fit the crime and in my opinion a suspended jail sentence is not justice. Not only was this man in a position of trust but as Priest and teacher at Maria Fidelis Convent School and that he has done something despicably wrong. Detective Chief Inspector Keith Braithwaite was right when he said that "Every indecent image accessed by Timothy Gardner was a real child, a vulnerable victim of crime."
We must not forget that. These are real children that could be mine or yours, this man did something horrifically wrong and yet he walked away with a very light sentence.
The Catholic Church has a problem and it needs to wake up.
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