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Surgeon-lieutenant Stuart Ruthven, now 27, a medical officer at HMS naval base in Plymouth, first downloaded child pornography in 1999 as a university student. He eventually signed on as a submariner in the navy for six years.

In 2002-3, police inquiries discovered that he had again used his credit card to access websites and download images. In June 2003, while on leave at his parents' home, he continued to download images, including ones of children in sexual activity with adults.

In court he admitted 12 offences of making indecent images and was given a risible 18 months' community rehabilitation. He was also banned from working with children under 16 and placed on a sex offenders' register, but only for five years.


Earlier this month, he was brought before the General Medical Council. Although Ruthven had downloaded 3,800 images, the GMC, incredibly, decided that such behaviour was "isolated, transitory in nature and not for sexual gratification".

Ruthven had described his activities as "a scientific quest". He said: "It was almost the thrill of the chase and perhaps I was rebelling after so long at sea." But how does that explain his taste for paedophilia while an undergraduate? More scientific research?

Although Ruthven had been accessing child pornography over five years, Alyson Leslie, head of the GMC's disciplinary committee, said the risk of him re-offending was "negligible". Ruthven now faces a navy inquiry but his superior officer, Captain Nicholas Morgan, said: "I am confident that he is not only remorseful, he is safe."


It is said that Ruthven is unlikely to offend again, so his punishment is light. Exercising the benefit of the doubt, as happens so often when child pornography figures, is completely inappropriate in this of all crimes, associated as it is with compulsive behaviour.

It also sends the message that the future of the consumer of pornography - his career and standing in the community - is more important than the fate of the horrifically damaged nameless children who are forced to provide the images for his "scientific quest".

Over a 12-month period, every court decision and sentence passed involving child pornography should be monitored and analysed. The men who satisfy their sexual appetite by feeding on child victims will be revealed as enjoying more second, third and fourth chances than any decent human being has a right to expect.