By Paul Revoir, Last updated at 10:02 PM on 02nd October 2008
A civil servant who allegedly wrote an internet article imagining the kidnap and murder of pop group Girls Aloud is being prosecuted under obscenity laws.
The prosecution of Darryn Walker, 35, is regarded as a historic test case which could affect censorship of the internet.
Walker allegedly described the kidnap, mutilation, rape and murder of the girl band in a 12-page ‘murder blog’ posted on a fantasy pornography website.
Experts are claiming the action is one of the most significant obscenity cases since the trial over the novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
It is expected to be the first test of the law since pornography became easily available online and is one of the first involving the written word in recent years.
The blog, headlined Girls (Scream) Aloud, is said to have been written about band members Cheryl Cole, Nadine Coyle, Sarah Harding, Nicola Roberts and Kimberley Walsh.
Scotland Yard’s Obscene Publications Unit brought the case after discussions with the Crown Prosecution Service.
It had been made aware of the blog’s content by The Internet Watch Foundation, which monitors illegal online content, which itself had been alerted last year.
The website where the blog was published is hosted in a foreign country.
But prosecution has been able to go ahead because the alleged author was identified as a UK citizen living in Britain.
In the coming weeks Walker, of South Shields, is due to appear at Newcastle Crown Court on charges of publishing an obscene article.
He was charged on July 10, and has already appeared before South Tyneside magistrates, where he entered no plea and was granted unconditional bail, a CPS spokesman said.
The Obscene Publications Act outlaws publishing material which tends to deprave and corrupt those seeing it.
The majority of recent cases have involved images in magazines and DVDs.
Media lawyer Mark Stephens said: ‘I think it is certainly the first fantasy case because nobody has been able to come up with a fantasy so bad before.
‘Since Lady Chatterley’s Lover the courts have always drawn a pretty stark distinction, between visual images, say a close-up of genitalia, and artistic works which put the human form in context.’
A Scotland Yard spokesman said: ‘Walker was arrested by officers from Scotland Yard’s Obscene Publications Unit on February 27 this year, at his home in South Shields, for the alleged publication of an article on a website.
‘The vast majority of prosecutions brought under the Obscene Publications Act have related to images or videos.
‘It is very unusual to be prosecuted for a case involving the written word.’
Since appearing on ITV1’s Popstars: The Rivals in 2002, Girls Aloud have become one of the most successful British pop groups of the decade, with 18 consecutive top ten singles.