Self-proclaimed ‘pedo mommy’ who abused infant son handed 20-year sentence

A northern Manitoba woman who shared videos of herself online sexually abusing her infant son has been sentenced to 20 years in prison.

“The sexual acts involved a serious level of depravity,” provincial court Judge Kael McKenzie said in a written decision released last week.

“She chose to abuse her son to satiate her own sexual gratification, whether that was from the acts with the child or the communication with (men) on the internet,” McKenzie said.

The 28-year-old woman pleaded guilty to one count each of sexual interference, making child pornography and distributing child pornography for offences spanning 13 months and beginning when her son was one year old.

The woman cannot be named as it would identify her son, who was seized by Child and Family Services and is in the care of a relative.

The woman came to police attention early last year after child sex abuse images uploaded to X (formerly Twitter) were linked to her account.

Police seized the woman’s cellphone and other electronic devices and found more than 150 pictures and videos showing her sexually abusing her son, and another 45 child sex abuse images she had downloaded from a website frequented by child predators.

In one online chat recovered by police, the woman talked to a person with whom she had shared child sex abuse pictures and described herself as a “pedo (pedophile) mommy.”

“There were also conversations with someone known to the offender who was extorting her for sex by threatening to report her for the sexual abuse of her son after she shared those images with him via the internet,” McKenzie said.

A review of the woman’s search history revealed she had researched whether X reported criminal activity to authorities, “thereby demonstrating she knowingly was committing a criminal offence,” McKenzie said.

Questioned by police, the woman admitted to abusing the child and distributing images of the abuse online.

A pre-sentence report prepared for court says the woman has a family history of residential school involvement and had an upbringing marred by early exposure to drugs and alcohol and repeated physical and sexual abuse.

The woman, who was raising the child on her own, claimed in the report she had made friends with a man online who turned out to be “controlling” and encouraged her to sexually abuse her child. She denied a sexual attraction to children.

“While she may have been influenced by a man on the internet, she was the only person who sexually interfered with her one-year-old child,” McKenzie said. “She was encouraged and perhaps coerced to perform the acts but was ultimately the only perpetrator.”

McKenzie credited the woman for time already served, reducing her remaining sentence to 18 years.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca