Laicised friend of former Hexham and Newcastle bishop jailed

Timothy Gardner was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison for assisting or encouraging the commission of abuse of a child.

Former priest Timothy Gardner, who was embroiled in the scandal which led to the resignation of the former Bishop of Hexham and Newcastle Robert Byrne, has been jailed after being caught engaging in online chats about abusing children.

Gardner, a former member of the Dominican order, was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison for assisting or encouraging the commission of abuse of a child. Newcastle Crown Court heard that Gardner was caught after an undercover police officer set up an online profile as an adult male. Garner approached him online in 2022, purporting to be a family doctor, and gave advice on penetrative sex of a child. Gardner, who believed the person he was contacting was a foster parent, gave him advice about abusing his foster children.

Gardner pleaded guilty to one count of intentionally encouraging or assisting the commission of a penetrative sexual offence against a child aged under 13 and offences of failing to comply with sex offender registration requirements and his sexual harm prevention order.

The former friar was given a suspended prison sentence in 2014 for 11 offences involving indecent images of children. He was placed on the sex offenders register and made subject to a sexual harm prevention order as a result. In 2022 he was given an interim sexual harm prevention order.

Gardner was a friend of Bishop Byrne, who wanted Gardner to live with him in his bishop’s residence, but the diocesan safeguarding officer Angie Richardson warned against it, given Gardner’s previous conviction for the use of child pornography. After Byrne resigned in December 2022 amid concerns about his approach to safeguarding, a series of inquiries into the diocese by the Vatican and the Catholic Safeguarding Standards Agency (CSSA) criticised Byrne. The CSSA concluded that he put people at risk.

Gardner was previously a religious education adviser to the Catholic Education Service (CES). Another former religious education adviser to the CES, Fr Joseph Quigley, was also convicted of child abuse. Quigley, who was jailed for 11-and-a-half years in 2020, was allowed to stay in post at the CES even after bishops first learnt of his abuse. Both Gardner and Quigley have been laicised.

The Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle said that Gardner has never been a priest of its diocese and that its current head, Bishop Stephen Wright, has never met him.

A spokesperson said: “The diocese has a zero-tolerance approach to abuse and condemns without reservation the crimes for which Timothy Gardner has been convicted and sentenced today.”

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