Mr Justice Francis Gilbert is a regular Beak in Plymouth's Crown Courts. He seems to be a commendably lenient man when it comes to those poor souls cursed with serious and anti-social sexual perversions.

In November 2007, Anthony Davies found himself before Judge Gilbert. He'd broken a Sexual Offences Prevention Order by persuading four underage children to go with him on a fishing trip without their parents' knowledge. Davies acquired the SOPO by being caught with 1,200 indecent images of children, so this was just more standard cunning stuff from the men who think kids enjoy being anally ravished really. But despite warnings from experts about Davies representing a danger to children, the judge eschewed the route available to him of banging the paedo phile up for five years, and chose instead to let him get help. "Being a danger to children is not an offence" Gilbert mysteriously concluded.

Two years later, however, Judge Gilbert had hardened his heart a little: he gave serious paedo phile downloader John Squance a seven-month jail sentence for downloading 6,919 paedoporn images. Many folks would've preferred a more radical change of mind (especially as Squance had already failed to turn up for the first attempt at a hearing). But Mr Gilbert's leniency towards paedo philes seems potentially infinite. In April 2007, for example, he was that man refusing to jail the Plymouth paedogirlies who forced two toddlers to fight for the cameras.

Two years before that, he granted the request of the two paedo phile defendants Palmer & Tapper to take a holiday during their trial. The reason for a holiday, they told Francis Gilbert, was stress. The couple, who ran a landlord and letting agency, assaulted their young victims after finding them homes when they came out of social services care. The two chums legged it to Turkey (nice place if you're into little boys): Palmer was finally caught after an Interpol operation in late 2009, but Napper is still at large.

It is perhaps no surprise that paedo stuff is going on in Plymouth, for the City Council has not always enjoyed a spotless reputation for child protection. Top CEO Barry Keel got another rollicking from Ofsted last month about poor and variable standards in Council child care.

In fact, sharp tongues among those described by Plymouth councillors as the ‘lunatic fringe’ whisper about the alleged interest of some members of the judiciary in leisure activities involving minors. Others still talk of odd Section 100 gagging orders, and hypothesise about how convenient bail-jumping might be for those at pains to keep prisoners from turning Queen's Evidence.

This column can't comment on that, as we lack the hard evidence with which to do so. And also, of course, we don’t listen to the lunatic fringe.

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