A 57-year-old man has been jailed for 18 months after he admitted sending intimate photographs and videos of his wife, taken without her knowledge or consent, to other men.
The man, who can’t be named to protect the anonymity of his wife, pleaded guilty to three offences contrary to the Harassment, Harmful Communications and Related Offences Act 2020.
He admitted sending a photo of his wife topless, a photo of her emerging from a shower and a video of her emerging from a shower to both a man he knew and a man he met in an adult chat room.
Det Garda Brian Morris of the Cork County Protective Services Unit told Cork Circuit Criminal Court that the woman became suspicious of her husband’s behaviour in August 2022.
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She went to check his phone and discovered the images taken without her knowledge or consent and found that her husband had transmitted all three images to a person whom she did not know.
The woman contacted her own family upon discovering the images and in the company of two of her siblings, she asked her husband to leave the family home which he did.
A week later, a close friend of the woman called to her home to say that her husband had told her that he had received intimate images of the victim sent to him by the victim’s husband.
The images sent by the accused to both the man he knew and the man in the chat room were also accompanied by a text about his wife described by Judge Helen Boyle as “vile and degrading”.
The woman reported the matter to gardaí who arrested the man, and he made full admissions at interview that he had taken and transmitted the images and text to the two men.
He said he had deleted all of this material from his phone on the day that his wife confronted him about it in August 2022 and he said he was no longer in contact with the man he met on the website.
The woman told in her victim impact statement how her husband’s offending has ruptured their family with both her daughter and son struggling to deal with what their father had done.
“Never in my wildest nightmares could I have imagined I would have to prepare a Victim Impact Statement in relation to sexual offences committed by my husband.
“I had to re-live a heinous discovery and reassociate myself with perverse and difficult predatory behaviour by the man I was married to, and the father of my children.
“It has been extremely difficult. I did not ask to be a victim of such abuse, but it is a label that I will have to live with for the rest of my life.
“The devastation the offences cause, and will continue to cause, is probably irreparable. Overnight, suddenly and catastrophically, I became a single mum.
“What choice did I have? How could I place myself in further danger of being covertly photographed and videoed by a self-confessed pervert.
“I barely left the house for two years. I couldn’t face anyone locally. I didn’t know who had seen the images of me – what they thought of me – it was humiliating.
“The invasion of privacy and the violation of my bodily integrity are both extremely distressing and horrific. How will I ever be able to trust someone again?”
“I have been warned that post-traumatic stress disorder may appear at any time ... It is something that I will have to live with and anticipate.
“The trauma has affected me to my core and my confidence has been shattered. The horrors of the crimes committed against me are something I will always have to live with and I feel so sad about that.”
Judge Boyle said that when the accused sent the images to the man he met in the adult chat room, he had relinquished control of the images and could not say where they went after that.
He was guilty of a huge betrayal and had done huge damage to both his wife and to his children, one of whom had described losing all contact with her paternal relatives since the offending occurred.
She sentenced the accused to two years in jail but said she would suspend the last six months to encourage rehabilitation, and she backdated it to November 5th when he first went into custody.
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