An alcoholic mother has been jailed after admitting she sexually exploited her four-year-old daughter and photographed the child next to her naked partner.

The woman’s offence only came to light when a crushed mobile phone was found on the side of a road and the sim card checked for content by a member of the public.

The Irish Sun
reports that police were called after a phone video showed the girl’s father lying on a bed naked from the waist down and the child’s face close to the man’s genitals.

The 28-year-old woman can be heard laughing and telling the child to ‘smile for the camera’.

The woman, whose identity was kept secret to protect the child, pleaded guilty at Dublin’s Circuit Criminal Court to sexually assaulting and exploiting the girl in 2010.

The child, now six, has been taken into care by the state and the court heard that the woman has since split from her former partner.

Judge Martin Nolan told the woman her actions were ‘squalid’ and ‘reprehensible’.

He said she had failed in her duty as a mother as he imposed a sentence of three years but suspended all but 16 months of the prison term.

The judge said he accepted that the woman was genuinely sorry for the offences.

Detective Brian Jennings told the court: “When we showed the video footage to the woman she said she was sickened by it and began visibly gagging.”

The lawyer for the woman told the court she had a serious drink problem and was drunk on the night the video was made.

He also said there was a complicated psychological factor involved in his client’s relationship with her ex-partner, the man in the video, and this was related to trying to maintain a relationship with him.

Her lawyer said she hasn’t drunk alcohol since February 2011 and has completed a 12-step alcoholic programme.

Judge Nolan noted the woman’s problems. He remarked that she is ‘not the brightest person’ but said he believed that she probably did know that what she did was reprehensible.