Stacie-Marie Laughton was sentenced to more than 33 years in prison for aiding and abetting the sexual exploitation of children, closing a case built around explicit images taken at a daycare workplace and messages prosecutors said showed the abuse was planned. Lindsay Groves, her former partner, was sentenced earlier this month to nearly 22 years in prison in the same case.
The sentence lands now because Laughton, 42, has only just been punished in a case that has followed the public collapse of a political career. She once won a seat in the New Hampshire Legislature in 2012, then resigned before taking office after a prior felony conviction came to light. She later resigned from the New Hampshire House of Representatives in December 2022 after she was arrested and accused of stalking and harassment.
Prosecutors said the pair’s conduct centered on Creative Minds Early Learning Center in Tyngsborough, where Groves pleaded guilty to taking and sending nude pictures of children at her workplace. They said she used routine bathroom breaks and diaper changes to snap the photos, and that a forensic review of the pair’s cellphones found more than 10,000 messages sent over about one month in 2023, including several explicit photos of children who appeared to be between the ages of 3 and 5. Laughton pleaded guilty last fall to three counts of aiding and abetting the sexual exploitation of children.
The sentencing also exposed the split between how Laughton tried to frame herself and how prosecutors described her role. In one message to another adult, she wrote, “I don’t like that I have these but I wanted to show you the proof. I am not a kid pervert.” Prosecutors said she was deeply involved in the conversation around the abuse, and one called the conduct at issue “abhorrent.” Another described the case as planned, strategized and carried out for the sexual gratification of one or both defendants, not a spur-of-the-moment crime.
The exact length of Laughton’s prison term was not spelled out beyond more than 33 years, but the punishment is among the most severe imposed in the case and arrives after Groves’ sentence earlier this month. For Laughton, it is a final and severe reckoning in a case involving very young children, a daycare setting and a record of public office that has now ended in prison.
