IAN Paisley jnr has told how he wanted to "strangle" the man who took pictures of his gravely ill father and posted them on the internet.
The North Antrim MP said he 'wanted to kill' nursing auxiliary Stacey Crawford when he heard about the photographs of ailing former first minister Ian Paisley. Crawford took the pictures after DUP peer Lord Bannside was admitted to hospital in February 2012 suffering from heart failure.
The nursing auxiliary was dismissed from his post and later prosecuted over the incident but only after the former DUP leader's son lobbied the director of public prosecutions, Barra McGrory.
When police seized Crawford's computer they found images of child abuse.
The father-of-three took his own life in December 2012, weeks after appearing at Newtownards Magistrates Court on charges related to the indecent images. "I wanted to get the guy and kill him, I wanted to strangle him," Mr Paisley said as he revealed that Crawford had taken the sheets off his father's hospital bed before taking the photographs.
Of the Public Prosecution Service's initial decision not to prosecute the nursing auxiliary, he said: "If I hadn't had the gall to go to back in and said to the public prosecutor, 'I want this pushed again', that chap would still be free in my view and could still be committing these things."
Mr Paisley said Crawford's superiors at the Ulster Hospital were "aghast" at the episode and immediately apologised. "[Crawford] had abused his standing as a nurse. He had abused a vulnerable adult when dad was in a state of complete and total reliance for care and protection," he said. "To dare to go into my father and to dare to try to take provocative pictures of him... I wanted to kill the guy."
* FATHER AND SON: Former first minister Ian Paisley and his son Ian