A salmon farm worker who admitted distributing an obscene video depicting sexual activity between a person and an animal has been fined £200.
Andrew Manson, 22, of Lerwick’s Haldane Burgess Crescent, admitted the offence when he appeared at Lerwick Sheriff Court yesterday.
Procurator fiscal Duncan Mackenzie said police discovered the pornographic video on Manson’s phone after executing a search warrant. The video had been sent to a small group of friends on a social media app on 13 August 2015.
The fiscal acknowledged the video had been sent “more out of morbid curiosity rather than any sexual element”. He said it “may be the sort of thing young men do” without realising it is a crime.
Defence agent Tommy Allan said his client was only 20 at the time and was working with older men.
Someone else had sent the pornographic video to him and he “didn’t fully understand” the technology, mistakenly believing the video would only be viewable to those he sent it to for a short time.
He added that Manson hadn’t sent the video for the purpose of sexual gratification and as a result of his experience now avoids social media altogether.
Sheriff Philip Mann said the case “maybe illustrates the dangers of using social media indiscriminately”, adding there were people who are “quite happy to pass on this material without any thought of the dangers they may be placing the recipient in”.
But he was satisfied there was “no significant sexual element”, adding he hoped Manson would use it as “a lesson to be very vigilant in the future”.
