Child porn shame don Dr Nicholas Hammond keeps job

A CHILD protection charity has slammed Cambridge University for allowing an academic convicted of possessing sexual images of two-dayold babies to return to work.

The university said Dr Nicholas Hammond, who is being paid while on "special leave" following his conviction for possessing 1,500 images of child pornography, will return to work next April.

A meeting on Friday will discuss whether he should remain a fellow of Gonville and Caius College.

The failure of the university or the college to take more serious action against Hammond has been condemned by the children's charity Kidscape.

A tip-off led to a police raid on Hammond's Cambridge University-owned home in June 2007. In July this year he admitted at Cambridge Crown Court to having 1,540 images on his computer.

He admitted 12 charges of making indecent images, one of possession of images and one of distributing two images. The images were predominately of males, aged two days to 16 years. Thirty were at level five, the most serious on a five-point scale.

The 45-year-old, a former director of studies in modern languages at Gonville and Caius, was sentenced in September to 12 months in prison, suspended for two years, with a two-year supervision order. He was placed on the sex offenders' register and fined £1,000.

A university spokesman said: "The university has announced that Dr Hammond will return to work as a university reader next April, under strict conditions.

Until then he remains on special leave."

Details of his exact role on his return have not yet been finalised.

Hammond told the court he had not intended to view level five images, only those of teenage boys.

An extraordinary general meeting of the Fellows of Gonville and Caius on Friday will consider Hammond's position as a Fellow.

The College Master Sir Christopher Hum, said: "The meeting on Friday will not take decisions, which are a matter for the Master, but will be an opportunity for Fellows to express their views."

Claude Knights, director of Kidscape, said:

"The punishment here does not fit the crime.

We would expect a signal from such an august body that they are with the victims."

Cambridge News Online