News

September 10, 2009

Phila. sitter gets 25 years for letting ex abuse children

By MARYCLAIRE DALE Associated Press Writer

PHILADELPHIA — A home day care provider was sentenced to 25 years in prison for letting her ex-boyfriend sexually abuse and film children, some of them infants, in her care.

Concetta Jackson, 47, of Collingdale, is the third and final person sentenced in what a federal judge called a “sociopathic” child-pornography case.

John Jackey Worman, 42, of Colwyn, sexually abused victims from infants to teens and captured more than 1 million images and 11,000 videos of child pornography, prosecutors said.

The unemployed Worman was sentenced to a life term in August.

Another co-defendant, Dorothy Prawdzik, 45, of Drexel Hill, took part in some of the sex acts and is serving a 30-year term for manufacturing child pornography.

Defense lawyers say both women feared Worman.

Jackson pleaded guilty to a single child-pornography count, prompting her public defender, Mark Wilson, to argue for the minimum 15-year sentence.

He described Jackson as low functioning, and said she was “blindly indifferent” to the abuse but did not procure children for Worman, as prosecutors allege.

“There is no direct evidence that Concetta Jackson knew that Mr. Worman was going to sexually abuse any infant or minor or even that he was going to produce lascivious photographs or videos,” Wilson wrote in his sentencing memo.

Prosecutors, however, say Jackson turned over children as young as 6 weeks old knowing Worman would abuse them, and let him live in her home with her four children.

Jackson, who was divorced, feared Worman would work to have her children removed from her care if she refused his demands, Wilson said.

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