Hi,
That sucks about deleting the pictures. I've heard of something similar over here when a friend was taking photos inside an airport for her art class and they made her delete them all.
Have you used your camera much since? You should be able to undelete the images no problem if you haven't used it since and there's still a chance you'll get some back if you haven't used it much. Sandisk supply some with their memory cards and there's plenty of other software out there.
Was the video camera digital too? Tapes or flash card?