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Daycare owner convicted of child pornography and abuse of an eleven-year-old

TheoJuly 1, 2024

The owner of a daycare center, Silfredo Castillo Martinez, sexually abused an 11-year-old boy, authorities said. (Police photo: New York Police Department)

The owner of a New York City daycare center has been sentenced to two and a half decades in prison for sexually abusing one of the children in his care. The defendant, 34-year-old Silfredo Castillo Martinez, also possessed around 9,800 images of child sexual abuse, the Department of Justice in the Southern District of New York said. A judge sentenced him to 25 years in prison on Thursday.

From July 2015 to May 2022, Castillo Martinez owned and operated Lina’s Garden Day Care from his home on Decatur Avenue in the northern Bronx neighborhood of Williamsbridge, authorities said. From May to July 2018, he filmed himself sexually abusing an 11-year-old girl.

This came to light years later when Google tipped off the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children on April 25, 2022, that a user appeared to have uploaded child sexual abuse material. The following May 3, police executed a search warrant and seized about 30 electronic devices owned by the user. Inside, they found the child sexual abuse material, including a video showing the 11-year-old abuse victim. They identified the child and learned from the mother that the victim had attended the daycare for several years, authorities said.

In an interview with authorities after the Miranda disclosure, the defendant admitted to uploading the abuse material to his Google Drive account, the documents say. On March 21, he pleaded guilty to sexual exploitation of a minor and production of child pornography.

“Silfredo Castillo Martinez took advantage of the trust placed in him as a childminder by sexually abusing one of the minor children in his care and recording that abuse,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams of the Southern District of New York said in a statement. “This lengthy prison sentence holds Castillo Martinez accountable for his horrific crimes and the extraordinary harm and trauma he caused.”

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