Who recognizes pedophiles??

FAMILY and victim groups yesterday slammed disgraced prosecutor Patrick Power's barrister, branding his courtroom theatrics an attempt to "minimise" the horror of child pornography.

Top silk Ian Barker convinced a jury to put Lindy Chamberlain behind bars and protected the late High Court judge Lionel Murphy from the same fate.

His latest cause Mr Power, 54, a child porn addict and former deputy senior Crown prosecutor who Mr Barker this week described as a ``person with integrity''.

In a sentencing hearing before Downing Centre Local Court, Mr Barker described Power as a "good man" - despite the hundreds of sickening child pornography images found on his computer.

"In one sense the community is indebted to him and he's now entitled to call in that debt," Mr Barker told the court. "He is not a paedophile nor anything like it."

Mr Barker's comments were met with anger by the Australian Family Association, which accused him of failing to heed the clear links between child porn and paedophilia.

"It needs to be kept in mind that the people who view this material are feeding off the vicious and cruel exploitation of children," executive director Angela Conway said.

"Describing a person like Power as a man of integrity is just wrong. If a person is ... consuming this type of pornography they are a paedophile.''

Robyn Cotterell-Jones, from the Victims of Crime Association League, said Mr Barker's remarks suggested some paedophiles deserved preference because of their social status.

"What Power's defence counsel is saying is that he is a good bloke apart from this one crime," she said.

"Well, child pornography happens to be an absolutely abhorrent crime and you cannot argue that a person guilty of that has integrity in every other aspect of their life."

Power has pleaded guilty to possessing almost 29,000 pornographic images on his computer - including more than 400 of children as young as five.

Ahead of Power's sentence on May 9, Mr Barker asked the court to consider that his client had "almost entirely withdrawn from society because of the shame, depression and humiliation".

It is not the first time the eminent silk has taken on a controversial case.

As Crown prosecutor in Ms Chamberlain's 1982 murder trial, he said the theory a dingo had abducted baby Azaria was a "transparent lie".