Ex-Bishop Gets Double Credit for Jail Time, by Jessica Smith, Metro Ottawa, December 20, 2011

Ex-Bishop Gets Double Credit for Jail Time

By Jessica Smith
Metro Ottawa
December 20, 2011

http://www.metronews.ca/ottawa/local/article/1055564--ex-bishop-gets-double-credit-for-jail-time

Former Roman Catholic Bishop Raymond Lahey.

Raymond Lahey, the former Roman Catholic bishop caught with child pornography at the Ottawa International Airport, will get two-for-one credit for his time spent in jail before his sentencing, a judge has ruled.

Lahey, 71, one-time head of the diocese of Antigonish Nova Scotia, asked to go directly to jail in May when he pleaded guilty to a single count of importing child pornography.

The federal government ended two-for-one credit for pre-sentence custody in 2010, but Justice Jack Kirkland ruled that because Lahey was charged in 2009, the old rule applied in his case. Kirkland dismissed the Crown's suggestion that Lahey's asking to be incarcerated early was a ploy to get his sentenced reduced.

At the time, his lawyer, Michael Edelson, said the request to be jailed was meant "to signal to the court the sincerity and genuineness of his remorse."

Kirkland will issue his decision on Jan. 4. Lahey could be released from custody that day if Kirkland agrees to a defence request that he receive the minimum sentence of one year in jail.

The two-for-one credit will reduce whatever sentence Lahey receives by eight months.

The Crown wants Lahey to serve 18 to 22 months and says the offence of possession is serious.

"At the root of all child porn is the hands-on abuse of children," Crown attorney David Elhadad said.

The two sides also argued about the relative depravity of Lahey's pornography collection and the impact of his crime.

Edelson said Lahey's collection was not as bad as some cases since it did not include images of infants or bestiality.

But Elhadad pointed to images that suggested torture and noted that a number of them showed victims wearing rosaries. In one case, a man dressed as a monk is paddling a young male. Elhadad said the religious and torture images relate directly to stories on Lahey's laptop and a handheld device.

'I became addicted to pornography': Lahey

Former Catholic bishop Raymond Lahey apologized in court on Tuesday for the "addiction to pornography" that he blames for his fall from grace.

"I know that I've done wrong, not only something illegal but something that goes against the moral principles that I believe in," Lahey said. "Something that is even more wrong is, somewhere along the line, children and young people are truly and genuinely hurt because of such exploitation."

Lahey said he was relieved when his porn collection was discovered at the Ottawa airport in 2009, because it forced him to deal with his addiction.

"I became addicted to pornography on a very indiscriminate basis," he said. "This was an addiction powerful enough that despite my own distaste for it and my own internal convulsions, I could not break it."

Lahey said he wanted to use the media attention his case has attracted to warn others about the addiction, saying they should "look at what they're doing, cease it and seize the help they need."