Angry scenes erupted inside an Ottawa courthouse Wednesday after a Catholic bishop with an addiction to Internet pornography walked free despite admitting to possessing images of naked boys wearing rosary beads and crucifixes.
Ontario Court Justice Kent Kirkland sentenced Raymond Lahey to 15 months in jail Wednesday, time that he will be credited with already having served, prompting an outburst from one man in the court.
"You're not a pedophile, you're a demon, you f–king idiot," the man yelled at Lahey.
"I'm a survivor, I got to live with it. He's a f–king demon!" the man shouted, as the judge called for security.
Lahey, who once negotiated a $13-million settlement for victims of child sex abuse by priests as the bishop of Antigonish, N.S., pleaded guilty in May to possession of child pornography for the purpose of importation.
However a leading children's rights activist said Wednesday that the 15-month sentence did not reflect the seriousness of the crime.
Rosalind Proger of Beyond Borders said Lahey helped fuel a market for child pornography.
"These are real children in these images," she said from Winnipeg. "They are not drawings. If you look at this sentencing from the perspective of the victims — the children in those images he had — there is a real disconnect between the crime and it ramifications on young lives.
"If the children in those images could have stood in the court room perhaps the sentence would have been tougher.
"No one would be making child pornography if there wasn't demand and what people like Lahey do is create the demand", Ms Proger said.
Lahey had been returning from a trip abroad when customs agents checked his laptop computer and found images which included young boys and teens engaged in sex acts including bondage and torture.
Police discovered 588 child pornography images along with 63 videos and several stories with themes of slavery.
The child pornography made up only a small percentage of the approximately 155,000 pictures of pornography he had on the computer.
The 71-year-old voluntarily surrendered himself into custody to begin serving what the law says must be a minimum mandatory sentence of a year in jail.
However, Justice Kirkland ruled at Lahey's last court appearance before Christmas that the contrite Lahey should be eligible for two-for-one credit for the eight months he already spent behind bars.
With 16 months credit, Lahey's sentence was complete, Justice Kirkland found. Crown prosecutors had asked for a sentence of 18 to 22 months.
A psychiatrist who examined Lahey testified he was interested in gay sado-masochistic sex and wasn't a risk to reoffend against a child. Dr. John Bradford added that he was confident Lahey is not a pedophile.
During an earlier court appearance, Lahey told Justice Kirkland he had an "indiscriminate" addiction to online pornography but didn't seek help because of his high-ranking position in the church.
Lahey said he secretly wanted to be found out, so it was a "blessing in disguise" when customs agents stopped him at the Ottawa airport in September 2009. A psychiatrist at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario in Ottawa claimed users of child pornography have a "very high recidivism rate".
"When people use child pornography they are aware that their preferred sexual object is a child and that this is abhorrent to society," said Dr. David Palframan.
"But despite their knowledge they find it almost impossible to stop. And even though they feel deep shame they continue — and this speaks to the power of this sexual choice."
Part of the problem, Dr. Palframan added, is that medicine has very little to offer these offenders.
"It's almost at the cellular lever. It becomes embedded in their personality. They usually never fell into normal sexual behaviour. The can't graduate to the idea of sex with adults."
With files from Charles Lewis, Postmedia News and The Ottawa Citizen
