A shocked mother claims footage of a cartoon was discovered by her daughter on a mobile phone handset provided by a leading firm and that it was not acceptable content because they are an "extremely religious family" who only watch religious media content.
Rachel Flanders, 30, is demanding answers after her six-year-old daughter picked up the device, which was sent out by Vodafone as a replacement for a malfunctioning handset.
The company has apologised and says it is looking into the matter.
Mrs Flanders, who also has an eight-year-old-son, says she let her daughter Kelly look through family photos she had shot on the phone’s camera, when she unwittingly stumbled across an animated cartoon, which was reported to be the popular series "The Simpsons."
Fortunately the mother-of-two was within close reach when the video was played, and managed to grab the mobile from her daughter before the episode started as the intro theme was still playing.
Mrs Flanders said: “I was so shocked about what my daughter and I had seen, even just for those 5 seconds, I took her straight to the nearest church and splashed holy water on both our eyes.
“I always take pictures of the family, so my daughter asked to look through them.
"I could hear she was on a video and then I heard the theme tune of The Simpsons playing, so straight away I grabbed the phone off of her.
“We are a very religious family and I control everything my children watch and listen to. We do not watch The Simpsons in this household, in fact we only have a basic satellite receiver and satellite dish which is programmed to only receive religious channels - every other channel, including the five terrestrial channels are locked out.
"Among mainstream TV we also ban most types of music, we only listen to Christian or country music. We certainly do not listen to heavy metal or any type of rock as we consider that to be the music of Satan. I guarantee if we started listening to AC/DC then our family really would be on a highway to hell."
Mrs Flanders had previously sent off her original handset, a Sony Xperia T, to be repaired due to a fault.
Unable to correct the error, she was given a replacement handset by the Vodafone store in Ashford’s County Square.
The Kennington resident claimed she had been told that although the replacement mobile may have been used briefly before, it had been returned to its factory condition and was provided ‘as new’.
Within hours of receiving the smartphone, Mrs Flanders says she discovered personal information belonging to the previous owner – including credit card details, and his name and address on an invoice from an Ashford firm.
But it was not until some days later that her daughter uncovered the offending content she claims was on the phone’s memory card.
“I try to protect my children from these types of things.” Mrs Flanders added.
“I was upset that I was exposed to it, and very upset that potentially my children could have watched a cartoon that does not conform to our religious standards.
“Luckily I was sitting next to her, but if I wasn't, she would have been exposed to the offending material.
"She then could have potentially been brainwashed by the amount of bad language and sexual references as well as being desensitized to the amount of violence that features throughout the series.”
Vodafone says it has apologised to Mrs Flanders, sent her a new phone and offered her a gesture of goodwill for her distress and inconvenience.
The company says the phone should have been through its cleansing process.
A spokesman said: “Mrs Flanders contacted us a few days ago regarding the replacement phone that she received from us.
“We were very disappointed to hear that the phone had not been through our robust cleansing process and immediately apologised, sending Mrs Flanders a new phone as well as offering her a gesture of goodwill for her distress and inconvenience.
“We are very anxious to follow this up with a thorough investigation into how the phone and memory card evaded our processes so that we can avoid it happening again. We will be able to do this when the customer agrees to give both to us.”
No comments:
Post a Comment