What to Know
Former New Hampshire state representative Stacie-Marie Laughton will be spending the next few decades of her life in prison. Laughton pushed and convinced her then-partner to take explicit pictures of the children she worked with at Creative Minds daycare in Tyngsborough, Massachusetts.
The then couple spent countless hours exchanging thousands of text messages about acquiring the images, and then sharing the images. Laughton, who held a seat in the New Hampshire House of Representatives until 2022, had a history of run-ins with law enforcement. She was forced to resign from her seat due to an arrest.
Laughton was sentenced to 33 years in prison for her crimes.
According to the sentencing memo, federal prosecutors said the 42-year-old, who was New Hampshire’s first openly transgender elected official, talked “extensively” in text messages about “potential or fantasized sexual contact with kids” in the spring of 2023, Boston dot com reported.
“The conduct at issue here is abhorrent,” prosecutors wrote in the sentencing memo. “These were children who were not yet fully potty trained, not old enough to even go to the bathroom themselves, and not fully verbal. This was not a ‘crime of opportunity’ in the sense in which we typically think of that concept. This was planned, it was strategized, and it was carried out for the sexual gratification of one or both defendants in this case.”
Laughton’s former partner, 40-year-old Lindsay Groves, was sentenced to 22 years in prison in early June 2026.
While Groves knew what she was doing was wrong, prosecutors say Laughton’s “voice was, to put it mildly, the more prominent one in the ongoing conversation regarding the sexual exploitation of the victims in this case.”
They also said that messages from Laughton showed a “borderline obsessive focus on sex.”
Both Laughton and Groves pleaded guilty in 2025.
Laughton pleaded guilty to three counts of sexual exploitation of children on November 3, 2025, according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts. Groves pleaded guilty to three counts of sexual exploitation of children and one count of distribution of child pornography in October 2025.
They were arrested and charged in June and July 2023 respectively, and they were both indicted by a federal grand jury in July 2023.
Between May 2022 and June 2023, Groves took nude pictures of the children at the daycare and sent them to Laughton, the press release stated. Groves used bathroom breaks to take multiple pictures of the kids in a private bathroom. She would then text them to Laughton.
A forensic review of the former couple’s phones revealed over 10,000 text messages between them during a one-month period in 2023. The messages included talking about or sharing the pictures Groves took of the children, which included at least four sexually explicit pictures of kids who were three to five years old.
Stacey-Marie Laughton mentioned, showed, or forwarded the explicit images to two other adults.
According to earlier court filings reported by Boston dot com, Laughton allegedly texted one of the adults, saying “I don’t like that I have these but I wanted to show you the proof. I am not a kid pervert.”
But prosecutors said that she failed to mention her role in the crimes. They claimed she only reported the photos in an attempt to punish Groves for ending their relationship.
According to People, prosecutors requested a sentence of 40 years for Stacie-Marie Laughton. However, her attorney, Derege Demissie, requested a sentence of 17.5 years, per a sentencing memo he submitted. In the memo, Demissie said that while Laughton’s actions were “horrendous,” she is a “complex” woman with a “complicated childhood.”
Demissie claimed that Laughton experienced sexual abuse, has developmental delays and grew up with parental instability due to drug addiction. He also said she was dealing with “extensive mental health issues.”
Prosecutors argued that Laughton’s past didn’t change the crimes she committed.
“The defendant’s criminal history reflects a theme: entitlement, aggression, and manipulation,” they wrote in the memo. They also noted that as an elected official, Laughton had held a position of public trust.
“She must be held responsible for the damage that she has done.”
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