Disturbing case of child sexual exploitation with a Niagara Falls connection
Canadian Press
1/10/2013
A New Hampshire lawyer who took her daughter to Canada to videotape her having sex with a young Ontario man has been convicted of exploiting the 14-year-old to produce child pornography.
Jurors had the case for less than an hour when they convicted the 43-year-old woman of all eight counts, child sexual exploitation, transporting her child across state lines to produce child pornography and possession of child pornography.
The woman appeared stoic as the verdict was read.
Her daughter was in the courtroom and showed no emotion.
In their final argument today, federal prosecutors played the defendant's own words, recorded during various expletive-laden jailhouse telephone calls in December, calling her daughter a liar and blaming her for her predicament.
Defence lawyer James Moir argued that his client, who's not named to protect the identity of the girl, did not force or prompt her daughter to engage in the sex acts she videotaped.
Two men testified they had sex with the woman and with her daughter multiple times during separate encounters in 2012, one in Niagara Falls and the other at the attorney's home in Manchester, N.H.
Both said the accused recorded several of the sexual encounters on a smartphone.
Kevin Watson, of Niagara Falls, Ont., testified yesterday that he spent a long weekend in May, 2012 with the mother and daughter in a motel room in Niagara Falls.
He said he met the girl online and that they had sexually explicit Skype sessions before the rendezvous about three weeks after the girl's 14th birthday.
The woman was a member of, and had advocated for, the Alliance Defending Freedom, an anti-gay Christian group.