Karlee Auda pleads guilty to sharing private photos of woman’s vagina and breasts

A mother of two has learned looking through your partner’s mobile phone can only lead to trouble, with a magistrate telling her he would ‘never’ do such a thing to his own wife.

Former Bowen State High School student Karlee Auda was sentenced at Bowen Magistrates Court after pleading guilty to distributing prohibited visual recordings. Picture: Facebook

A young Bowen mum will spend the next 12 months on probation after pleading guilty to distributing intimate photos intended for one man’s eyes only.

Karlee Auda, 23, was reported to police in mid-July after sending a woman several Facebook messages containing digital photographs of that woman’s exposed vagina and breasts.

Bowen Magistrates Court heard the woman in the photos was the former girlfriend of Auda’s current partner, and Auda had decided to send the images “back where they came from” on July 4 after discovering them on her partner’s mobile phone.

Police prosecutor Sergeant Jay Merchant said the offence was “extremely” serious, as the woman in the photos, which dated back to 2018, only ever intended for them to be seen by her then boyfriend, and believed they had been deleted when the relationship ended.

Likening Auda’s sharing of the photos to “revenge porn”, Sgt Merchant said her sentence needed to “send a message to anyone else who wants to share intimate photos: it’s not happening.”

“Although it’s not a revenge porn charge, it is that type of scenario,” Sgt Merchant said.

“They were two consenting adults involved in an intimate relationship at the time, and that’s been breached by the distribution of those photos,” he said.

The Bowen court heard Karlee Auda and her partner Jake Nicolson, pictured, had ‘issues’ with Nicolson’s former girlfriend since the start of their relationship. Picture: Facebook

Defence solicitor Peta Vernon said Auda and the other woman had experienced “ongoing issues over a number of years” and Auda had sent the photo messages “out of frustration”, even though she knew it was an offence.

Ms Vernon said Auda had been subject to “abuse, threats and the like” from the other woman, including having a rubbish bin thrown through a window of her home at one stage.

The court also heard Auda’s father had passed away and been farewelled at a funeral in the days leading up to the offence.

“She’s had a fair few stresses in her life and she’s reacted very badly and inappropriately,” Ms Vernon said of her client.

Acting Magistrate Athol Kennedy had some advice for the mother of two in handing down her sentence: “We all get frustrated from time to time, we all get angry from time to time. It’s what we do with it that’s important.”

Mr Kennedy told Auda a better thing to do would have been to delete the images as soon as she found them, but added it was never a good idea to “trawl through” someone else’s phone.

“Huge problems arise … Relationships fall to bits,” he said.

“I would never look through my wife’s phone.”

A conviction was not recorded.

Originally published as Karlee Auda pleads guilty to sharing private photos of woman’s vagina and breasts