CALL THIS JUSTICE; Judge cuts a pervert priest's sentence to just 18 months, then he sends bag snatcher back to jail for six years.

A JUDGE was slammed yesterday after locking away a handbag snatcher for six years - and letting a sick paedophile priest free after just 18 months.

Justice Hugh O'Flaherty was dealing with sentence appeals on the cases of Sabrina Walsh and Father Gus Griffin.

He heard how heroin addict Sabrina Walsh, 20, from Ballymun stole a handbag from an English tourist in Dublin last December.

She was originally given NINE years by a court last June, but yesterday her sentence was reduced by just one third.

And Justice O'Flaherty warned that handbag snatchers would face "exemplary" sentences in the future.

However, the same judge later reduced the sentence of paedophile priest Gus Griffin by six years to just 18 months.

It means that Sabrina Walsh will stay FOUR TIMES longer in jail as the priest who sexually abused children as young as 10.

Last night Opposition Spokesman on Justice Pat Upton hit out at the decisions calling them "bizarre and extraordinary".

"It's very difficult to ask the public to understand something like this," said the Labour frontbencher.

"There has to be a whole review of sentencing policy. I understand that a judge has to have discretion.

"But this is just wrong. The impact on the victims has to be considered.

"Stealing a handbag from someone is not going to have the same effect on a victim as a sexual assault when he or she is a young child.

"I am surprised at this judge because he does not have a history of this, but it just highlights that we have to have a fresh look at sentencing."

There has been widespread anger at the pervert priest's jail sentence being cut to just 18 months.

Griffin, the former editor of RTE's Outlook programme had been serving time for buggery, gross indecency and indecent assaults on young boys he had access to.

Last July he pleaded guilty to a sample four charges relating to offences between 1976 and 1983.

One of the priest's victims was abused by Griffin, the ex-head of vocations for the Holy Ghost fathers, in the order's headquarters at Kimmage Manor in Dublin after the boy said he wanted to join the priesthood.

The Circuit Court sentenced the paedophile priest to:

l Four years for indecently assaulting a ten-year-old boy in 1976

l Four years for indecently assaulting a teenage boy in 1981

l One year for committing an act of gross indecency with the same boy in 1982

l And seven-and-a-half years for buggering the same victim in 1983

Because the court ruled that all the sentences were to run concurrently, Griffin was jailed for the longest sentence - seven-and-a-half years.

But yesterday Justice O'Flaherty cut six years off the sentence.

The judge said that the disgraced priest was free to leave jail if he adhered to certain conditions.

These conditions include an order that Griffin spend the remainder of his time with the monks at Mellifont Abbey.

The priest will be allowed no unsupervised access to persons under 18 years and he will not be allowed to leave the monastic enclosure or meet visitors without the judge's permission.

The judge claimed that the 18-month sentence had to be viewed in the context of Griffin's age.

It would mean he would be almost 80 years of age by the time sentence was served.

Mr Justice O'Flaherty said that nothing emerging from the court should be taken as minimising the desperate distress this had caused so many people.

He said that sentencing was not an exact science and that each case had to be taken on its own merit.

"We have this individual and his victims to consider," he said.

"There has to be punishment for such crimes but we must also consider that no man must be given up as beyond redemption."

But Justice Hugh O'Flaherty decided earlier to cut the sentence of handbag- snatcher Sabrina Walsh by just one third.

Unemployed Sabrina Walsh had originally been sentenced to nine years but she claimed that there was no way she could have known the bag contained pounds 10,000 in cash and jewellery before she stole it.

The heroin addict claimed she just wanted enough money to pay for her doctor and some methadone to treat her addiction.

Yesterday in court barrister Fergal Foley said the sentence was out of proportion with the crime.

Justice Hugh Flaherty agreed to cut the sentence by one third but said that handbag snatching was "like a cancer on society".

"The court is sending out loud and clear the word that people involved in handbag snatching will get exemplary sentences from now on."

Justice O'Flaherty believed that the crime created "infinite disruption" and victims had to be protected.

Earlier this year the court was told that the tourist who had her handbag snatched was Maureen Reynolds from View Road in London.

Her house had been broken into a week previously and she had her valuables in her handbag because she was afraid to leave them behind.

Sabrina Walsh has six previous convictions for larceny, but she has always pleaded guilty when arrested for the crime.

She has had a serious heroin addiction for the last two years and last night Pat Upton TD claimed she was the latest victim of an out-of-date legal system.

"This woman's case should have been up in front of a drugs court," he said.

"Even though her crime is not a drugs offence it is obvious that drugs are the cause of her crime.

"What she needs is treatment - not six years in jail."