A mother-of-two who took photos of her children while naked to use them against her ex-husband during separation proceedings has been jailed for three years, after a court found her guilty of producing, possessing and circulating child pornography. 

The crime was aggravated because she was their mother and also because she was a teacher, with Magistrate Audrey Demicoli ordering that her name be included in the sexual offenders’ list and that she be banned for life from working in close contact with minors. 

Separate proceedings against the children's father are still pending and the woman is expected to appeal her sentence. 

The court heard how the 36-year-old mother, whose name is banned from publication by court order, landed in hot water in September 2017 when she showed her colleagues at school photographs on her mobile phone of her children, naked, and husband. 

The matter was flagged to the authorities and the police moved in to investigate the claim, arresting the mother and seizing her mobile, laptops, pen drives and an external hard drive found at her home. 

At the time her children were aged three and one. She told the police that around 18 months prior she had made up her mind to separate from her husband who used to walk around the house naked.

She said she had wanted to use the photos during the separation proceedings, to show the court how he was not suitable to be around children.

On the photographs in which the children are seen posing alone, the woman explained that she had taken them to send to the paediatrician so he could ascertain whether all was okay with their growth. 

She admitted that she had started taking photographs of her children while naked with her husband, also in the nude, because he was a bad influence on them, adding that her son refused to wear clothes because he was copying his father.

Her relationship with her husband was running smoothly at the time but began worsening until it hit the rocks after the birth of the second child. 

The woman insisted that the photographs she had taken were not indecent or pornographic. In fact, the court found that some of the photographs exhibited as part of the proceedings, where the children could be seen alone, did not qualify as indecent. 

The same, however, could not be said for those photographs in which the naked children were seen posing erotically with their naked father. There were a few photos in which the children are seen touching their father’s private parts. 

A programme used by police and court experts to analyse photographs flagged them as being child pornography. 

Magistrate Demicoli said the woman’s explanation that she was planning to use the photographs as evidence against her husband was not a legitimate reason to possess such material. Neither did the woman bring any evidence that separation proceedings had actually been instituted. 

“The accused cannot shirk the responsibility for taking the compromising photographs of her own children, choosing to store them, going as far as passing them on to another person on a pen drive to get them printed at a stationery, and even showing them to colleagues at school so they could give her advice on her separation. This is not credible and neither is it excusable,” the court said in its judgment. 

While the woman was cleared of defiling her children, the court found her guilty of possessing pornographic images of her children and jailed her for three years. 

The court further ordered that her name be listed in the sexual offenders’ register and that she be “permanently banned” from exercising professional duties which involved any direct or regular contact with minors.

Police Inspector Joseph Busuttil prosecuted.