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NH mother guilty of exploiting teen daughter for child porn

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — A New Hampshire lawyer was convicted Thursday of exploiting her 14-year-old daughter 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 Thursday, 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.

"This is not her daughter's fault," U.S. Attorney John Kacavas said. "Tell her by your verdicts she should have been a mother."

Defense attorney James Moir argued that his client did not force or prompt her daughter to engage in the sex acts she videotaped.

"You can hate her. You can be morally outraged by what she did," Moir told jurors. "You can have these emotions but you have to put them aside when you deliberate."

Kacavas countered that the government didn't have to show the defendant "caused" her daughter to engage in the sexual conduct, including a videotaped session involving the woman performing oral sex on the child.

"All she had to do was use or employ this child in making child pornography," Kacavas said. "She sexually exploited her child."

The final prosecution witness Thursday was FBI agent James Scripture, a computer forensic examiner. He testified that all the explicit videos the jury saw Wednesday were on the defendant's computer, including some that were uploaded from her iPhone. He said the video of the defendant performing sex acts on her daughter was created May 18, 2012 — a week before the defendant took the girl to Canada and videotaped her having sexual intercourse with a 19-year-old she'd met online.

The defense called no witnesses.

Two men testified they had sex with the defendant and with her daughter multiple times during separate encounters in 2012. Both said the defendant videotaped several of the sexual encounters.

The Associated Press doesn't typically identify victims of sexual assault; it is not naming the mother to avoid identifying the girl.

Moir conceded during closing arguments that his client did possess child pornography on her laptop — one of eight counts against her.