'Extraordinary harm and trauma': Day care owner sentenced for abusing 11-year-old and possessing about 9,800 images of illicit material

Day care owner Silfredo Castillo Martinez sexually abused an 11-year-old, authorities said. (Mug shot: New York Police Department)

A day care owner in New York City is going to spend two-and-a-half decades behind bars for sexually abusing one of the children in his care. The defendant, Silfredo Castillo Martinez, 34, also possessed about 9,800 images of child sexual abuse material, said the Department of Justice in the Southern District of New York . A judge sentenced him on Thursday to 25 years in prison.

From July 2015 to May 2022, Castillo Martinez owned and ran Lina’s Garden Day Care out of his home on Decatur Avenue in the northern Bronx neighborhood of Williamsbridge, authorities have said . It was from May to July of 2018 that he recorded himself sexually abusing an 11-year-old.

That surfaced years later when Google gave the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children a tip on April 25, 2022, that a user had uploaded what appeared to be child sexual abuse material. Law enforcement executed a search warrant the following May 3 and seized about 30 electronic devices that he possessed. Inside, they found the child sexual abuse material, including a video showing the 11-year-old abuse survivor. They identified the child and learned from the mother that the victim attended the day care for several years, authorities said.

In speaking to authorities post-Miranda, the defendant admitted uploading the abuse material to his Google Drive account, documents stated. He pleaded guilty on March 21 to sexual exploitation of a minor and production of child pornography.

“Silfredo Castillo Martinez exploited the trust placed in him as a daycare provider by sexually abusing one of the minor children under his care and recording that abuse,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams of the Southern District of New York said in a statement. “This lengthy prison sentence holds Castillo Martinez accountable for his horrific crimes and the extraordinary harm and trauma he caused.”

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