Nanny admits to child porn charges
The former Roxbury nanny accused of possessing and distributing child pornography — and who shared non-pornographic images of children she cared for as a nanny — pleaded guilty to charges and will spend three years in state prison.
“These are horrible crimes. Shocking,” said Suffolk Superior Court Judge Michael Doolin at the change of plea hearing Wednesday morning. “Some of the worst allegations I have heard in my career as a judge and also my career as an attorney.”
Doolin sentenced Stephanie Lak, 37, of Roxbury, to three years to three years and a day in state prison in Framingham, followed by 10 years of probation. She pleaded guilty to three counts of child pornography and two counts each of dissemination of visual material of a child in state of nudity.
She will register as a sex offender and is barred from being in contact with minors. Her electronic devices will be subject to search by her parole officer.
Lak, who had pleaded not guilty to the charges during her arraignment last April, quietly sobbed, her head down, as prosecutor Nicole Poirier described her crimes and the effects on the victims.
“Every time the defendant viewed an image of child pornography, the child was harmed,” Poirier said. “And every time the defendant shared an image or a video of child pornography, she contributed to the demand and market for children to be sexually abused and exploited.”
One victim whose abuse video was included in Lak’s collection — which Poirier described as “particularly horrifying” as it contained images and videos of children as young as toddlers being raped — “suffers from severe anxiety attacks and has been diagnosed with anxiety, depression, visual and auditory hallucinations” following her abuse, Poirier read from an impact letter.
Authorities first became aware of Lak when they received a tip on March 2, 2021, that the user “SallyDally69_x,” identified as Lak’s account, was trading possible child pornography on the Kik messaging app.
“The defendant engaged in some of the most grotesque online chats, discussing ways to sexually abuse children, that the Commonwealth has ever heard,” Poirier said.
Lak’s attorney Christopher Kenney said his client has been remorseful from the beginning and wants to take responsibility for her actions. He added that “she can’t believe that she finds herself in this situation,” as she “identifies with the victims in this case” as a victim of abuse herself.
Lak also went by the name Stephanie Germaine as a noise musician in Boston and was previously a member of a local punk band.
“I had a lot I was dealing with, and that style of performing helped me work through it,” she said of that and other art projects in a decade-old profile in the Lowell Sun. She was raised by an abusive alcoholic father who at one point was arrested for kidnapping and rape.