The town authorities in Dendermonde have asked the police to investigate an incident in which pornographic images appeared on an electronic council informal panel in the centre of the East Flemish town.
Passers-by on the Oude Vest couldn’t believe their eyes. Rather than information about municipal services and council-backed events they saw images from an X-rated porn site displayed on the public information panel in the street. The images had been sent to the screen from someone’s smartphone. The identity of the person concerned is as yet unknown. Dendermonde Town Council has reported the incident to the police.
Alderman Dieter Mannaert (Christian democrat) told VRT News that “At around 11pm I receive a telephone call reporting that pornographic images were being shown on the Oude Verst in Dendermonde. It has since transpired that someone used the buttons on the screen to connect it to their mobile phone. This enabled them to stream the images from their smartphone. The person in question must definitely have been within 100 metres of the screen”.
The Alderman called a technician, who cut off the electricity supply to the information panel. "I wanted to be certain that the panels couldn’t be messed with any longer. We switched them back on again at 9am and everything was back to normal.”
Dendermonde council has asked the police to investigate “the spreading of extreme pornographic material featuring violent content”.
“Spreading pornographic images in public places is forbidden. We will take strong action to deal with this. Fortunately, it was a quite Sunday and no many people noticed it”, Alderman Mannaert said.