The ‘sinister’ video was sent to the woman on WhatsApp

A woman prosecuted for possession of child porno- graphy after she failed to completely delete a two-minute video sent to her on WhatsApp has received a suspended prison sentence.

Judge Pauline Codd said that in January 2018, Omo Delpin Omorouyi was the innocent recipient of a video that began innocuously and featured a man and a toddler.

Garnet Orange, defending, said his client did not know what the video was and began watching it.

When it became apparent it was "something sinister", she stopped playing the video.

She asked the sender, who she knew only by his first name: "Why are you sending me child pornography?"

She told him not to text her again.

Omorouyi deleted the Whats- App message, but garda Kill-ian Leyden told the court the smartphone app automatically downloads images and videos to the phone once they are viewed, so the video remained on the phone.

A month later, gardai carrying out an unrelated investigation went to search a house in Swords, north Dublin, where the woman was living.

Omorouyi was not the target of this operation, but her phone was seized from the house during the search. A subsequent analysis recovered the video.

Omorouyi was arrested and told gardai she believed she had deleted the video.

"I did not know what it was until I opened it. I then deleted it from my phone," she told gardai. She said she regretted playing it.

Awful

Omorouyi (28) pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography at her home in Swords on February 2, 2018.

Mr Orange said the case showed that "any of us could find ourselves the recipient of this kind of awful material".

"This stuff is flying around online. It's a case of 'there but for the grace of God go I'," he said.

He added that his client should have reported the footage to gardai but did not. Judge Codd noted that this is not a criminal offence.

The judge said the "disturbing" video showed the rape of a two-year-old child, but the woman had innocently received it. She suspended a prison term of four months, noting the lack of any other convictions.

At the end of the hearing John Byrne, for the DPP, asked Judge Codd to order the destruction of the mobile phone.

"It's not possible to delete whatever data is on it with any degree of certainty," he said.

Mr Orange told the court that his client's ambitions to work in childcare are now gone because the conviction means she cannot get garda vetting.

"That door has being shut to her," he said.

She has left a college course in social care and is now working in a fast food restaurant.

Mr Orange said his client she came to Ireland from Nigeria as a juvenile and that "appalling things" had happened to her in her past.

In an assessment, a psychiatrist said that "listening to her had a moving effect on him".

Gda Leyden said that the adult in the video has since being identified as a man in Michigan, US, and has being convicted.