By Staff Reporter

Last updated at 12:15, Saturday, 24 January 2009

A woman told a court how a friend found a pornographic video of her on a mobile phone being used by a man they were having a day out with in the Lake District.

The woman said the film – showing her asleep and semi naked on a sofa – was discovered on the mobile of Tony Hammell, 28, who until then had been a friend.

Mr Hammell, of Bowfell Road, Mirehouse, Whitehaven, was charged with sexual assault following claims that he must have touched the woman and disarranged her clothes while she was sleeping.

But he was found not guilty after the judge stopped the trial because the woman’s evidence against him was not enough to lead to a conviction.

Earlier a jury at Carlisle Crown Court heard the woman, who can’t be named for legal reasons, was with Mr Hammell and two other friends when he began videoing them having a drink in a Windermere pub.

When the other friends took the phone to see what he had recorded, they also looked at other movies stored on it.

It was then, she said, that they found the video of her.

The woman said the film must have been made a few days previously when she had fallen asleep on a sofa on which Mr Hammell was sitting.

The court heard Mr Hammell admitted in an interview with the police that he had filmed the sleeping woman “as a joke”, but he believed he had deleted the recording. He denied moving any of her clothing.

First published at 09:03, Saturday, 24 January 2009
Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk