AS the editor of a newspaper, you expect to receive complaints as there is often a ‘villain’ in each story, whether it’s a criminal, governing body or housing developer.

However, I was stunned this week to receive a number of complaints regarding our court report about Matthew Gardner’s guilty plea to charges of making indecent videos of children.

Apparently we were ‘putting him in danger’ and ‘scaremongering’ by reporting the facts of the case – that he watched videos, some of the most depraved kind, of children being sexually assaulted.

Of course, almost all of those who complained were friends or relatives of Gardner who seemed to believe that we shouldn’t report his offences because, well, they know him.

It’s funny that they’d never complained about this kind of court report before, when the guilty party wasn’t someone they knew.

What they are all forgetting is that there are victims of Gardner’s crimes – every single one of the children who were abused in the videos he watched.

And, him and others like him who watch those videos, are encouraging rapists and abusers to carry out more assaults because they are showing there is a demand for such sickening images.