THE judge who was criticised yesterday for his ''lenient'' sentencing of seven members of the world's largest internet child pornography ring has in the past been praised for his toughness.
In August 1997, Judge Kenneth Macrae jailed a stalker who terrorised two female workmates at a branch of fast food chain McDonald's for four-and-a-half years.
The Cambridge-educated father-of-one branded Jangbahadur Singh Gill, of Bedfont, south-west London, ''callous and sadistic'' after Kingston Crown Court was told he had bombarded the teenagers with scores of letters full of sexual fantasies and threats to kill them.
Afterwards, the victims' parents praised the length of the sentence.
Doug Hayes, 50, said: ''It fairly reflects the misery he put the girls through,'' and his wife Linda, 43, described it as
''brilliant''.
In 1991, Judge Macrae jailed a former stockbroker for a total of four years for indecently assaulting two women with a vibrator while working as a strip-a-gram.
The 56-year-old, who has been a circuit judge since 1990, condemned the way Michael Crosby, who dressed as a policeman for his act, had ''degraded and humiliated'' his victims.
The court was told the women had their hands handcuffed behind their backs and were subjected to ''outrageous indignities''. Crosby, of Tottenham, north London, was found guilty of two assaults.
In 1993, his sentence was described as ''not a day too long'' by an Appeal Court judge after Crosby attempted to have the conviction overturned.
In 1995, Judge Macrae presided over the controversial case of former model Linda Antoniuk, who was freed after stabbing her businessman lover as he lay naked on her bed following a sex session.
The prosecution alleged that Ms Antoniuk, of Haslemere, Surrey, initiated sex with Shell International executive Michael Weston on the afternoon before he was due to leave on a two-year posting to Nigeria.
But she was found not guilty of two wounding charges after Judge Macrae told the jury to consider the defence view that she had committed them in a state of ''automatism'' after being raped.
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