Despite downloading 40 hours of video footage and 7560 images of child pornography, Smith was sent back to his community this week with little more than a slap on the wrist.

The punishment? A suspended jail sentence, a $1000 good behaviour bond and 150 hours of community work.

This for a man whose library included images of prepubescent girls involved in sexual acts with boys, adults and animals. Some images included babies.

The 28-year-old said he could no longer look at a young girl without thinking of the pornography he had viewed.

He sat at home fantasising about little girls - more than 1000 daughters, sisters and granddaughters aged from newborn to their teens.

If your blood is boiling now, you’re not alone.

Support advocates were quick to condemn the judiciary system for the lenient sentence, and rightly so.

Where is the justice for the little girls around the world who lost their innocence in those images?

Where is the message to other child victims of sex crimes that if they come forward, their perpetrator will be punished?

And where is the comfort for parents wanting to raise their children free from dirty eyes and danger?

I will probably come under fire for saying so, as men such as Smith lurk everywhere, but I have considered no longer visiting his small central Victorian town.

It’s a beautiful little spot, which we have often enjoyed. But if Smith is going to be walking along the main street or performing community service in a public place and I know he is looking at my children thinking child pornography images, why would I go there?

How am I doing my job as a parent knowing that it is happening, but I’m powerless to intervene?

I wouldn’t send my children into a fire, or put them in a car without a seatbelt.

So why would I go where I know there is the threat of danger?

Sadly, and alarmingly, Smith is one of many out there viewing little people in the same way - and we can’t avoid every public place because of that.