What the hell is going on in England?
Cambridge University is allowing an academic to keep his job despite a conviction for possessing sickening pornographic images of children.
The decision to welcome back Dr Nicholas Hammond has outraged children’s charities.
Hammond, 45, was last year suspended on full pay as director of studies in modern languages after being caught with more than 1,100 vile images on his computers.
They included 30 in the most serious ‘level five’ category of pornography and other images involving babies as young as two days.
But he was controversially spared jail last month and has been told he can return to work in April.
Hammond is a fellow and former student at Gonville and Caius.
But wait. It gets worse:
Hammond was arrested in June last year after police raided his home following a tip-off.
At Cambridge Crown Court in July this year he admitted making, possessing and distributing indecent images. Hammond, who is gay, told the court he had not intended to view the level-five images – only those of teenage boys.
Last month he was given a suspended 12-month sentence and a two-year supervision order. He was also placed on the Sex Offender Register and fined £1,000.
Judge Gareth Hawkes-worth, who graduated from Cambridge, told Hammond
he was a sorely damaged individual who could be rehabilitated.‘During this period you were suffering from moderate depression and you were seeking refuge from life in a halcyon part of your youth, relived by looking at low-level images of boys, often in swimming clothes,’ he said.
‘But viewing this material can become addictive and if you had not been interrupted there would have been a serious risk that your voyeurism may have turned into action.’
What!?! A) Hammond isn’t gay, he’s a pedophile. There’s a big difference. B) Depression causes people to surf child porn? That’s an outrageous excuse for the degeneracy of an individual. C) Porn causes both addiction and molestation? I thought the Europeans had advanced beyond pseudo-science.
Some of Hammond’s colleagues aren’t thrilled to have to rub rarefied elbows with infant rape fetishists as you can imagine. They’re pushing for him to get thrown out. Don’t hold your breath however, in England watching babies being raped takes a back seat to commenting on our elections.
You think American academics are any different?
I wish someone like Bobby Jindal would become the Republican Party’s next nominee. He has a good record on being tough on these degenerate filths.
I like Jindal. Steele and Rick Perry are also high on my list of candidates. Thompson of course as well, though this was likely his last chance.
Yeah, but I think Jindal’s going to be the anti-Obama candidate for 2012. He’ll be the first American Indian to be nominated for President of the Republican Party. Sarah Palin could come in again, that is only, and only if the media focuses on their “Great Leader’s” failed economic policies to come.
Rob Taylor,
There are a lot of things going on that I have trouble understanding. At the very least why aren’t the British people protesting in the streets?
i think that i was wrong that he did not get any time….he should get time because of the fact that he held on to those pictures makes him more of a criminal than turning them in, in less he took those pictures then that is another story. but i think he should have got time for that than 2to keep his job and get away with it. i think why does he still ave his job was it a inside job or what. these are the questions that they should be asking. : Why did he keep the pictures? Why did his job let him keep it? What made him want to look at those pictures? etc…. you tell me what should happen to him, because what i think is off the board…