CLAUDE Knights, furious at the eight-month sentence handed down to paedophile Brett Saunders, raises an interesting point that may explain the perversely short jail term.

“These crimes are too prevalent,” Mrs Knights says.

She is right.

We have seen far too many of these cases of men watching horrific abuse of children over the past nine years and it can only be that as the most tenuous of reasons why Recorder Peter Kyte believed Saunders merited spending just four months in jail.

Let us look at the facts as presented in court — eight years as a child-porn ‘addict’, almost 1,000 photos Saunders collected, plus six videos. One of these, which he kept on his phone, was 90 minutes long and chronicled the 10-year abuse of one poor girl.

And as police closed in he threw his laptop into a river to destroy the worst of the evidence.

The defence claim Saunders is an addict —but we did not hear any evidence that would justify a clinical recognition of this term.

If this case had been heard a few years ago, there is no conceivable way Saunders would have received an eight-month sentence.

So, even if we continue to see too many of these cases, that is no reason why a Recorder should betray children everywhere with such a pathetic sentence.