NIGERIAN midwife Amudat Popoola has been given a 14-month suspended prison sentence for possessing and distributing a child sex video to her colleagues at the Newham General Hospital in east London.
Ms Popoola, 50, was sentenced at the Snaresbrook Crown Court, alongside Nigerian health care assistant Ayodele Salami, 48, who bagged a 12-months jail term for the same offence. They were found guilty of showing the child sex video to their colleagues, who were so shocked by the footage that a student nurse immediately reported it to police who arrested the pair.
Ms Popoola had asked for the clip to be sent to her via WhatsApp in April last year, after being shown it by health care assistant Ms Salami. The sickening six- minute clip depicted a young girl of two to three years old performing a sex act on a grown male in his 20s or 30s, although the prosecution conceded that the offences were not committed for sexual gratification.
Judge Martyn Zeidman allowed them to avoid jail, however, giving them suspended sentences, convinced they only had the video to show how bad its content was. Both will now have to sign the sex offenders' register for 10 years and face the end of their careers.
"Miss Salami, Miss Popoola, you are both employed in a responsible, important position in a hospital. The public expect great things of you and it follows that you needed to show high standards of behaviour and at the very least ensure that you do not commit any criminal offences.
"It seems that once the image had been received you both sought to use it not for sexual pleasure but to demonstrate the evils of the world in which we live. Your motive was very different from someone who just does it for sexual purposes, as that is not the position here and it is what makes this case exceptional," Judge Zeidman added.
He pointed out that for both of the ladies, the convictions will have a dire consequence on their employment. Both women, who are from Dagenham, will also have to pay a court surcharge of £100, while an additional order was made for the forfeiture and destruction of the mobile phone on which the images were shown.
