A shop assistant has been found guilty of illegally supplying pornographic videos following a raid by gardai in which more than 1,700 uncertified DVDs were seized. Ciara McFerran was found guilty of 30 counts of unlawful possession and supply of
the DVDs. It is illegal to supply any video recording that has not been certified by the Irish Film Censor's Office. And of course the censors won't certificate hardcore anyway. Dublin District Court heard the shop assistant was prosecuted because
she was in charge of the store at the time of the raid, while her employers were out of the country. Judge Catherine Murphy said she would only consider leaving the accused without convictions if the shop's owners made a €20,000 charity
donation. McFerran pleaded not guilty to 30 charges related to the possession and supply of each uncertified pornographic DVD title. The charges were under the Video Recordings Act. She claimed she knew nothing about the regulations and believed
that everything for sale in the shop, Miss Fantasia on South William Street, was above board . The court heard 10 sample titles were selected from the seized DVDs and sent to the Irish Film Censorship Office (IFCO) to establish that they
were never certified for supply in this country. Ger Connolly, Acting Director of Film Censorship with the IFCO, told the court there had never been supply certificates in force for any of the works. He watched each DVD to establish the title and
content and they were handed in to court to give the judge a flavour of the content.
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