A midwife and a health care worker who showed colleagues a child sex video walked free from court today after a judge said they did it to 'demonstrate the evils of the world'.
Amudat Popoola, 50, played the sickening six minute clip to horrified staff at east London's Newham General Hospital on her mobile phone in April last year.
The horrendous film depicted a young girl of two to three years old performing a sex act on a grown male in his 20s or 30s.
Amudat Popoola (left), 50, played the sickening six minute clip to horrified staff at east London's Newham General Hospital on her mobile phone in April last year. The day before, Popoola had asked for the clip be sent to her via WhatsApp after being shown it by health care assistant Yaodele Salami (right), 48
The day before, Popoola had asked for the clip be sent to her via WhatsApp after being shown it by health care assistant Yaodele Salami, 48.
Colleagues at Newham General were so shocked by the footage that a student nurse immediately reported it to police who arrested the pair, Snaresbrook Crown Court heard.
But Judge Martyn Zeidman QC today allowed them to avoid jail - convinced they only had the video to show how bad its content was.
He said: 'Miss Salami, Miss Popoola, you are both employed in a responsible, important position in a hospital. The public expect great things of you.
'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.
Salami was handed a 12-month prison term, suspended for 12 months. Popoola (pictured) was handed a longer 14-month sentence for possessing and showing the same image to reflect her later plea of guilt, but that was similarly suspended for 12 months
'Your motive was very different from someone who just does it for sexual purposes.
'That is not the position here and it is what makes this case exceptional.
'For both of you these convictions will have a dire consequence on your employment.'
Salami was handed a 12-month prison term, suspended for 12 months, for possessing, distributing and showing an indecent image of a child.
Colleagues at Newham General Hospital (pictured) were so shocked by the footage that a student nurse immediately reported it to police who arrested the pair
Popoola was handed a longer 14-month sentence for possessing and showing the same image to reflect her later plea of guilt, but that was similarly suspended for 12 months.
Both will also have to sign the sex offenders' register for 10 years and face the end of their careers.
'This is an unusual case of its kind,' said Sarah Morris, prosecuting.
'[The clip] showed a young girl who the officer estimates to be aged two to three being sexually abused by an adult male in his twenties or thirties. It lasts about five or six minutes.
The two women were sentenced at Snaresbrook Crown Court (pictured) today
'Towards the end she wants to get up and go but he holds her back.'
James Higbee, representing Miss Salami, said she had been sent the video by a colleague at the hospital whose name has been passed on to police.
Later, during a discussion about the 'evils of the world' she showed the clip to Popoola as a means of illustrating that 'the world is a bad place'.
Mr Higbee added that his client was not aware that once the video had been viewed on WhatsApp it stored itself both within the app and on the phone's storage.
Popoola then asked her friend to forward the clip to her before showing it to co-workers for the same reasons.
'She said she wanted to show the colleagues what she had seen very much in the same terms which were said earlier on about the evils of the world,' said Suzanne Crane, for Popoola.
The fact that these offences were not committed for sexual gratification was not disputed by the prosecution.
As well as their suspended sentences, the two women, both from Dagenham, have to pay a court surcharge of £100.
An additional order was made for the forfeiture
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