Phone porn girl may be from the East

GARDAÍ investigating the girl in a pornographic picture sent to thousands of students believe she may be from the East Coast and not Cork as first thought.

The pictures of the teenager in a sexually explicit pose, sent by camera phone, were initially believed to have been taken in a Cork suburb.

However, a garda spokesman said yesterday they was satisfied sexually explicit pictures of the schoolgirl, who could be as young as 15, didn’t originate in Glanmire. While he remained tight-lipped about where their inquiries were leading them, it is believed that the crest on the uniform the girl was wearing may indicate she attends a secondary school in the east.

“I can only confirm that the image is not of a person from the greater Cork area,” the spokesman said.

He said a substantial number of young people had been questioned since an official complaint was made to gardaí last Friday week. The spokesman said it was too early to say if any of the people questioned would face prosecution.

Under the Child Trafficking and Pornography Act anybody caught in possession of a pornographic image, who has kept it stored in their camera phone for any length of time could face a jail sentence.

It is a far more serious offence to pass on such images to other people, and if a person is convicted of that they could face up to 14 years in prison.

Cork County Vocational Education Committee vice-chairman Noel O’Connor said he would be raising the issue of the use of camera phones at the VEC’s next meeting.

Mr O’Connor said he would be asking the chief executive and members of the VEC board to ban camera phones from all 26 schools under their control in the county. He said that, while mobile phones offered children protection, it had been shown that camera phones could lead to serious problems. “In schools at the moment anybody found using a mobile phone has it confiscated from them and it is later given to their parents.”

He said students didn’t normally bring cameras to school and he therefore didn’t see the necessity for them to be in the possession of pupils while attending school.