A WOMAN has been convicted at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court of posting adverts offering sex on a classifieds website on behalf of two unwitting people.
A jury of nine men and three women returned verdicts of guilty on all four counts of defamation and guilty on two counts of publishing material which was grossly offensive, indecent or obscene following deliberations on day three of the trial.
Aishling Madden (34) of Monastery Drive, Clondalkin, was accused of putting up posts on behalf of a man and woman on the Gumtree website offering various sexual acts and listing their phone numbers and addresses.
The woman told the court she received up to 20 calls from interested parties before the advert was taken down.
Madden had pleaded not guilty to four counts of defamation against the man and woman at her home between June 17th and 20th, 2006. She also denied a further two counts of publishing material which was grossly offensive, indecent or obscene.
Judge Patrick McCartan remanded Madden, who lives with her parents, on bail pending sentence at the end of the month.
During the trial the court heard that Madden told gardaí four people were in her house on the night the posts were made and they did it as a practical joke. However she said she could not remember any of their names or addresses.
Sgt Liam Coogan, who was attached to the Computer Crime Investigation Unit, told Sean Guerin, prosecuting, that Madden said in an interview that she was working as a temporary receptionist for Accenture in May 2006.
She said she came across the woman victim’s CV on the work computer and decided to e-mail it to herself as she thought it was a good example of a receptionist’s CV and she wanted to study it to improve her own CV.
Sgt Coogan said the woman victim’s CV appeared alongside the sexual comments and her contact details on the Gumtree website.
He said the CV was also found on a hard drive seized from Madden.
Madden told gardaí she had met the man, who had also been named once, when he working for the Office Angels recruitment company. Sgt Coogan said an e-mail between the man and Madden was also found on her hard drive.
She initially told gardaí she did not know who put the comments concerning the man and woman on the website. In a second interview she told gardaí three males and one female were in her house on the night the posts were made and had access to her computer. She said they had found the woman’s CV and posted it online along with the sexual comments but had not activated the post. She said they did this as a practical joke.
Mark Gibson, who worked with Gumtree at the time, gave evidence of the two messages posted on June 18th or 19th, 2006.
The woman victim gave evidence that she had been working as a receptionist for Accenture for several years and kept her CV under a password in her work computer. She started receiving calls concerning the advert and her daughter then found it online. She said she got 13 to 20 phone calls and five or six e-mails concerning it.
The man gave evidence that he had interviewed Madden for temporary office jobs but she was not successful.