A ‘bitter and vengeful’ married mother who sent private sexual films and pictures of a man to his 88-year-old father and 16-year-old daughter has avoided jail.
Former school welfare assistant Hilary Ward, 49, of Preston, posted a package of 12 printed colour stills of explicit photographs of her victim to his father, a distressed pensioner.
Ward also sent several sets of videos and pictures to her victim’s daughter over Instagram, where she called her father ‘a sick perv’.
Preston Crown Court heard Ward also told the teen: ‘I think it’s absolutely hilarious the entire universe can now see him perform.’
Ward was arrested after she sent a YouTube link to her victim on Saturday, February 29 last year.
The video sharing website removed the clip almost straight away after detecting its pornographic nature.
The man received a letter with a card in which Ward had written: ‘My friends and work colleagues can’t believe your videos, adding that some ‘can’t stop laughing’.
Ward was arrested last April, while her husband of 29 years was present, on suspicion of revenge porn offences.
Ward told officers: ‘He sent me photos and I sent them to his daughter’, before later admitting she did it because she was ‘hurt’.
The conversation with the man’s daughter was found during an examination of her Samsung phone.
Hilary Ward, 49, of Preston, was arrested last year after sending explicit revenge porn to her victim’s daughter, 16, and his father, an 88-year-old pensioner
The court heard Ward had sent messages including: ‘Some of your dad’s videos the perv’ and ‘You can see how sick he was in the head’.
She told the girl: ‘It worried me how he thought about sex all the time’ and ‘Tell your dad to look on YouTube’.
In a victim impact statement read to the court, the man said Ward’s actions had caused him sleepless nights and he felt he had failed his daughter.
Lisa Worsley, prosecuting, said the man’s father destroyed the photos he received in the post as he didn’t want his carer seeing them.
She told the court: ‘He was worried his son would suffer and may do something silly.
‘As a result of the link sent to him, he reported matters to the police.
‘He also received a letter containing photos of him doing sexual acts.
‘Very serious distress has been caused to the victim in this case.’
Chris Hudson, defending, urged the court to suspend her sentence on account of her age, lack of previous convictions and impact on her child and husband.
He added: ‘This is clearly a very serious matter. It’s a number of actions which were intended to humiliate and to hurt, but the trouble is a number of other people have also been hurt and really gratuitously so.
‘She felt the only way she could get to him was by his daughter and his father.’
Ward admitted two counts of sending indecent or offensive messages and disclosing a private sexual video or picture.
Judge Suzanne Goddard QC described the woman’s actions as ‘bitter’ and ‘vengeful’.
But she suspended her eight-month jail term for two years due to the effect on her own child’s wellbeing, current Covid restrictions in jail, and her public disgrace.
She said: ‘It was blocked by YouTube but nevertheless your intentions were clear, it was humiliation, and had it been uploaded it would have been available for the world to see.
‘This was really quite disgraceful behaviour on your part.
‘I’ve heard much about the effect on you and your family but what about the effect on your victim and his family?’
Ward, was also subject to an overnight curfew, 120 hours of unpaid work and a rehabilitation activity.
Plans to further criminalise revenge porn were announced in March this year, with anyone threatening to leak sex tapes or other explicit images of someone without their consent threatened with up to two years in jail.
