Friar who downloaded child porn spared jail

Campaigners against sexual abuse have expressed grave concerns as a leading figure in Catholic education was given a suspended sentence after pleading guilty to downloading more than 5,000 indecent images of children, writes James Macintyre.

Fr Tim Gardner, 42, avoided prison as he received an eight-month sentence, suspended for two years, at Southwark Crown Court on Monday. The Dominican friar, who is a former adviser to the Catholic Education Service (CES), will be put on the sex-offender register for 10 years. He also received a five-year sexual offences-prevention order which will allow police to inspect any computers and storage devices in the priest’s possession.

Police found 5,005 indecent images on his home computer last August, downloaded from the internet, including six images graded at level five – the highest – with one depicting bestiality.

Fr Gardner was also found to have taken part in at least 150 internet discussions with others who shared an interest in the material. He claimed to have been drunk when engaging in the conversations on the online communication tools Skype and Yahoo Chat.

The Dominican taught at Maria Fidelis Convent School in Camden, north London, between 2006 and 2012 and is a former governor of Rye St Antony, an independent girls’ school in Oxford. He was also Catholic chaplain to the Royal Free Hospital in London from 2007 to 2010, and had passed an enhanced Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) check.

Issuing the suspended sentence, the judge, Andrew Goymer, said the offences were particularly grave given Fr Gardner’s religious role, adding that this was not a victimless crime. “Sometimes in my experience people who commit this type of offence never fully appreciate the harm that they are doing,” he said.

But Anne Lawrence, a barrister and former chairwoman of Minister and Clergy Sexual Abuse Survivors, warned the Church against underestimating the danger of abusers because of the suspended sentence, while Peter Saunders, chief executive of the National Association for People Abused in Childhood, said: “This man has got off very lightly for a very serious crime.”

Marie Collins, who was a victim of child abuse – which included being photographed – and will serve on Pope Francis’ Child Protection Commission, told The Tablet that “every image is a victim”, and “the more demand there is for these images, the more children will be abused to supply them”. Ms Lawrence said: “Fr Tim Gardner … has funded and therefore ensured the continued terrible and depraved abuse of many more children … That he was also a priest, a hospital chaplain and an education adviser is the classic profile of a highly intelligent and manipulative sex offender.”

She added: “That he used alcohol … should not be a mitigating factor; for too long the Church and the courts have viewed this wrongly. If Gardner knew that when he drank he was disinhibited enough to download images of child abuse he should have stopped drinking.” Mr Saunders added: “The children abused to satisfy people like Timothy Gardner will have to live with the destructive memory of what they endured for the rest of their life. He walks free. And … there is an added dimension of evil when these crimes are committed by self-proclaimed men of God.”

Following his arrest, Fr Gardner was withdrawn from active ministry and suspended from his work.

Acting Detective Chief Inspector Keith Braithwaite of the Met’s Paedophile Command said: “Every indecent image accessed by Timothy Gardner was a real child, a vulnerable victim of crime.”