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Ex-day care worker gets 30 years in porn case Ex-day care worker from Roanoke headed to prison for child porn production

Roanoke Times - 7/7/2018

A former day care worker from Roanoke was sentenced Friday to 30 years in prison in a child pornography case that one official said "does not get sicker than this."

U.S. District Judge Michael Urbanski ordered counseling and sex offender treatment during incarceration for Shannon Marie Bobrosky , 24, who pleaded guilty to the production and distribution of child pornography.

Sexual gratification related to the abuse of children motivated Bobrosky to engage in online activity involving multiple men in western Virginia, elsewhere in the United States and overseas, authorities said.

Not only did she abuse a child, make photographs and share the images, one man with whom she corresponded online was abusing a different child and producing images that he supplied to her, said assistant U.S. Attorney Laura Rottenborn.

"It does not get sicker than this," Rottenborn said.

Allegra Black, Bobrosky's defense lawyer, said long-term sexual abuse marred her client's childhood and went untreated. The judge said the sexual abuse Bobrosky suffered lessened her wrongdoing to a degree, but he chose the 30-year term to punish her for egregious crimes and to protect the public.

Bobrosky avoided life in prison by providing information on other criminal investigations.

At the time of her arrest in February 2017, Bobrosky was employed by the Roanoke Valley'sYMCA as a part-time after-school day care worker at Virginia Heights Elementary School . She was fired a short time later, YMCA officials said .

The previous fall, U.S. Homeland Security agents in Newark, New Jersey, broke the case while probing a Craigslist ad looking for people with deviant sexual interests, court papers said.

In connection with the ad, Cody Mann of Bloomingburg, New York, pleaded guilty in the Southern District of New York federal court to enticing a child to engage in illegal sexual activity. Mann, also known as "Will," is scheduled to be sentenced Sept. 6, according to New York officials.

When Mann was linked to Bobrosky, Virginia agents joined the case. They questioned and arrested her in Roanoke in February 2017, court papers said. She has been jailed since.

The seizure of Bobrosky's phone enabled authorities to piece together an online dialogue in which Mann and Bobrosky discussed deviant acts and Bobrosky performed some of them and sent Mann images. In one scenario discussed, he would rape her and then the child, according to Rottenborn.

Bobrosky sent a reply saying she liked the idea. If authorities hadn't intervened, "it was only a matter of time until Will showed up and then what would have happened?" Rottenborn said.

Bobrosky denied meeting Mann in person and did not recall telling him her location, Black said.

The defense argued that the photos of the child were "staged" in terms of sexual activity at Mann's behest and that the online dialogue was more fantasy than an expression of true intent. Bobrosky broke the law, but acted under the influence of her earlier life, her attorney said.

When she moved to Roanoke in 2016, she ceased her perverse online activity for months, Black said. But she resumed it after several traumatic events.

At age 24, she has time to respond to treatment and re-emerge from prison capable of leading a normal life, said Black, who asked the judge for a 15-year sentence.

After court adjourned, deputy U.S. marshals allowed Bobrosky to exchange words with supporters in the gallery, but they blocked her from receiving a hug. She was led away in handcuffs.

At the time of Bobrosky's arrest and firing, authorities said they knew of no evidence that any child other than the one connected to these charges was victimized by Brobrosky.

Friday, Rottenborn said in court that at least one of the men with whom Bobrosky corresponded knew she was employed in child care and asked for images of those children. Bobrosky later sent non-pornographic photographs of some of her day care charges to Mann, according to Rottenborn. They were not "illegal pictures," Rottenborn told Urbanski.

Later Friday, YMCA spokeswoman Brittany Madonna released a statement saying, "We communicated everything we knew about this situation with parents in our program, both in person and in writing, as information became available to us."

YMCA officials plan to contact the U.S. attorney's office for more information about Friday's hearing. "As always, the safety of the children in our care and communication with their parents/guardians is a top priority of the Y," the statement said.

After being released, likely when she's in her late 40s or early 50s, Bobrosky will spend the rest of her life under federal supervision, Urbanski ruled. She is barred from any contact with the child victim and was ordered to pay $15,000 toward the cost of the child's counseling.