NORTHERN IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph
Prison for ex-pastor whose sex abuse of three girls covered up for 30 years by Baptists
BY PAUL HIGGINS AND CHRIS KILPATRICK – 22 JUNE 2013
A former Baptist pastor and gospel singer has been jailed three decades after his abuse against three young girls was covered up by the Church.
Paul Gardiner was sentenced to 11 months and banned from working with children.
Jailing the 52-year-old at Belfast Crown Court, Judge Gordon Kerr QC told him his “historical sexual abuse” offences were aggravated by the fact there were three victims and that he had breached the trust placed in him when he had been a guest in their respective homes.
Judge Kerr also ordered the pervert to spend 10 years on the police sex offenders’ register.
Prosecuting lawyer Rosemary Walsh had told an earlier court how the abuse happened on each occasion when Gardiner, who was in his late teens at the time, was staying overnight at the victims’ houses, whom he knew through associations with Monkstown Baptist Church in Newtownabbey.
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