Edinburgh Playhouse sends porn DVDs to children

A SCOTTISH theatre has been forced to apologise after it sent out DVDs containing pornographic images to families and young children.

Edinburgh Playhouse. Picture: TSPL

The Edinburgh Playhouse Theatre had to recall 100 promotional discs, sent out to advertise its summer project for children, after staff discovered the “inappropriate” sexual content.

The theatre has apologised for its “unacceptable” mistake and reported the incident to the police.

The Playhouse is Scotland’s largest theatre and runs successful youth drama projects, with children as young as 10 taking part.

Promotional DVDs for the children’s summer project were manufactured by a third party production company.

CONNECT WITH THE SCOTSMAN

• Subscribe to our daily newsletter (requires registration) and get the latest news, sport and business headlines delivered to your inbox every morning

• You can also follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Google +

After sending 100 discs to families and children in Edinburgh on Monday, the pornographic material was discovered by a member of staff and the DVDs were immediately recalled.

All families were contacted by the theatre and staff were told not to speak to the press.

The Edinburgh Playhouse has informed the police and asked the production company to launch a full investigation.

An inside source, who did not wish to be named, said: “The Playhouse does a summer programme for kids and sent out a DVD of it to families, which had to be immediately recalled because it had pornography on it.

“The content on the DVD had some really bad stuff and staff at the theatre were told not to speak to the press about it.”

The Edinburgh Playhouse regularly shows theatre shows aimed at children.

A spokeswoman for the Edinburgh Playhouse described the “inappropriate content” on the DVD as “pornographic”.

She added: “The Edinburgh Playhouse sincerely apologises for any distress caused by this totally unacceptable mistake.

“We took immediate measures to recall all of the DVDs, sought the advice of the police and notified those affected customers as a matter of urgency.

“The error occurred at the third party place of manufacture and we have demanded that the DVD production company launches a full investigation into the incident.”

A spokeswomen for Police Scotland said: “Police received a call and are completely satisfied it was a production error and that no crime has been committed.”

SCOTSMAN TABLET AND IPHONE APPS

• Download your free 30-day trial for our iPad, Android and Kindle apps

• Keep up to date with all aspects of Scottish life with The Scotsman iPhone app, completely free to download and use