INDECENTLY assaulting two under-age girls over a period of five years led to Jeremy Gardner being jailed for four-and-a-half years. Gardner, 45, admitted eight sexually related offences in the Royal Court.
In addition to one count of gross indecency to a child, three indecent assaults and three counts of taking indecent photographs of a child, he also pleaded guilty to possessing indecent photographs of children.
Police were alerted to Gardner after one of the girls asked him to give back photographs and videos he had taken of her.
Gardner did so and she handed them to police. Following her complaint, another girl came forward.
The former taxi driver had stored more than 155,000 pornographic images on his computer.
Crown Advocate Philip Robey said the majority were of adults, but more than 1,300 were of children under the age of 16 that had been downloaded from the Internet.
Specialist police officers had to recover the pictures from the computer as Gardner had tried to delete them.
‘Some of the images of child pornography that had been recovered from the computer were shown to him and he did not dispute that they were indecent photographs of children,’ said Advocate Robey.
Gardner said he had never shown anybody else the images and admitted that he knew it was an offence to possess them.
Defence advocate Martyn Baudains said Gardner had lost his home and job and was allowed to see his family only under supervision.
‘He appreciates that he does not deserve the court’s sympathy, but these offences have made a profound change in his life,’ he said.
In sentencing, Deputy Bailiff Geoff Rowland said the period of time over which Gardner had committed the offences was an aggravating factor.
Calling Gardner’s acts ‘unwelcome, horrible and disgusting’, he said Gardner would have known the offence, humiliation and upset his abuse had caused.
‘Your actions have had a profound effect on them and their families and the long-term effects are harder to assess,’ said the Deputy Bailiff.
‘You are a risk to some sections of the public unless you receive treatment for your problems and, in a small community like this, your sentence will live with you for the rest of your life.’
He said the court must protect children from Gardner’s type of behaviour and hoped the sentence would deter others from carrying out similar offences.
Gardner was given credit for pleading guilty, avoiding the need for the two victims to give evidence in court.
Sentences ranged from two to four-and-a-half years on seven of the offences; all are concurrent.
As Gardner had already deleted the downloaded images, he could not be sentenced as the law viewed them as not being in his possession. The law has since been changed to allow imprisonment as a sentencing option.
He will also have to take part in a sex offenders’ rehabilitation programme. As Gardner does not have any assets, no order was made.
Article posted on 12th August, 2004 - 12.00am
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