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Day care worker charged in child sex photo case awarded pretrial release
A federal judge ruled that conditions limiting Lindsay Groves's access to technology and contact with minors “will reasonably assure the safety of the community.”
A New Hampshire woman charged with taking sexually explicit photos of children at the Tyngsborough day care where she worked will be released from federal custody as she awaits trial, a judge ruled Friday.
Previously:
Lindsay Groves, 38, was charged in June with sexual exploitation of children and distribution of child pornography for allegedly taking nude images of children at Creative Minds Early Learning Center and sharing them with her romantic partner at the time, former New Hampshire state representative Stacie M. Laughton, 39.
Laughton, the first openly transgender lawmaker elected in New Hampshire, has been charged with aiding and abetting the sexual exploitation of children.
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Authorities previously said that a preliminary forensic review of Groves’s cellphone revealed more than 10,000 text messages between her and Laughton. Court documents include some of the sexually charged messages the women are accused of sending, including one text where Groves allegedly wrote about wanting to “do it with the kids at work.”
On Friday, Chief Magistrate Judge Donald L. Cabell allowed Groves’s request for pretrial release, though he listed several caveats.
Noting that “the weight of the evidence against the defendant is strong” and that the allegations involve minors, he wrote: “These factors underscore the risk of danger to the community if the defendant is released.”
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However, Cabell continued, “the court finds that conditions of release can be fashioned to address this risk and reasonably assure the safety of the community.”
The conditions stipulate that Groves must live with her parents in Hudson, New Hampshire; that no children under the age of 18 may visit the home; that Groves will not have access to her iPhone, which investigators seized; and that her parents’ devices will be password-protected and removed from the home when they are not there.
Groves is also barred from visiting Creative Minds or having contact with its staff and clients, according to Cabell’s ruling.
These conditions, the judge asserted, “will reasonably assure the safety of the community.”
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