A 51-year-old Briton was subject to a hate campaign that led
to a heart attack after he was wrongly accused of owning a film of a woman
having sex with a tiger.
Bus driver Andrew Holland was sent the video by friends as a
joke but spent six months on bail after being charged with possession of an
extreme pornographic image.
As a result Mr Holland, who claims to have watched just six
seconds of the video, was subject to ridicule, sent poison pen letters, branded
a paedophile and targeted by vigilantes.
However, prosecutors dropped the case in December 2009 after
realising the 'tiger' was actually just a man dressed in a costume.
According to The Independent, officials at the Crown
Prosecution Service realised their mistaken when the costumed man said: 'That's
grrrrrreat' - the catchphrase of Frosties cereal mascot Tony the Tiger.
Mr Holland, who was denied contact with his young daughter
for more than a year, said: 'I lost my job, I had to move and I ended up having
a heart attack with all the stress of it,' he said. 'People were ringing me in
the middle of the night.
'Three young lads turned up at my door and were calling me
everything. I was threatened on more than one occasion.'
Now he is trying to get the law on extreme pornography
changed to prevent 'harmless but crude' jokes from going to court.
His lawyers have written to the Director of Public
Prosecutions and will go to the High Court if they are unsuccessful.
The offence of possession of extreme pornographic images
came into force in January 2009 and make it an offence to possess pornographic
images that depict acts which threaten a person's life; acts which result in or
are likely to result in serious injury to a person's anus, breasts or genitals;
bestiality; or necrophilia.
It has resulted in more than 5,500 prosecutions, mainly for
bestiality images and footage.
The prosecution has to prove that the image is 'pornographic;
grossly offensive, disgusting, or otherwise of an obscene character'.
Freedom campaigners say the act criminalises people who
exchange dirty jokes or images by phone or the internet.
Source-Dailymail
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