IAN HART: “Four years is a joke”

However, every so often, a really serious subject will come up and I have to go with my gut instinct and write what I think, and, unfortunately, if that offends any Herald readers, while I will apologise in advance, it’s part and parcel of being a columnist.

Convicted sex offender Ian Green is one such subject, but where do we start?

We are told he was already a registered sex offender and was living in Worthing.

Obviously, the police and the authorities knew, but who else should have been made aware of this? The local schools? His neighbours?

The do-gooders and Lord Longford types can bang on about his civil liberties, but once he’s broken the law in a such a manner, does he deserve any rights or civil liberties?

I’ll move on to his latest offence, the sharing of 100,000 indecent images via the Facebook network (and, on a related theme, once again the “good” people of Facebook haven’t exactly come out of this covered in glory).

For all its fun and frolics, the over-riding concept of the site is flawed.

They appear to have no apparent control, or desire for it, over child pornography and any other unpleasant content being posted on the site.

We’re not talking one or two photos; it’s 100,000.

Yet when questioned about controls and panic buttons, the silence from the Facebook organisation appears to be deafening.

Another aspect is the hard work the police put into this massive operation – one of the biggest of its kind, we’re told.

Yet what sentence does Green get? Four years, which probably equates to two-and-a-half, with “good behaviour”.

He will be given heating, lighting and three square meals a day.

By the very nature of his crime, he won’t be in the mainstream prison environment, instead probably sharing a cell with another paedophile, so that they can swap stories and possibly contacts for when they eventually get out.

To my mind, for the crimes committed, four years is a joke.

For the scale and content of the photos, I would have no hesitation in locking up this scumbag for the rest of his life.

Even one month in prison for each photo would equate to his never getting out. The police have overwhelming evidence he is beyond help, so why put our youngsters and, in fact, children all round the globe at further risk?

When he does surface from the penal system, possibly in around early 2013, I would hope a return to Worthing would be impossible, but then he’ll be forced to go somewhere else and that’s not fair for the people of that particular place.

Saving children from future abuse has to be the priority, so that’s why it’s best for the good people (i.e., the ones who don’t peddle child porn over the net) for the likes of Green and his sick cohorts to be locked up forever.

Some may call that view extreme, but what price should be put on stopping global child abuse?