Baby-Sitter Guilty of Child Porn

Aaron Jay Lemon, 23, of Little Canada, Minn. pleaded guilty to a single count of producing child pornography before U.S. District Judge David Doty in federal court in Minneapolis. He was hired through Craig's List as a baby-sitter for a 2-year-old girl in St. Paul. In the plea, Lemon admitted he coerced the toddler to engage in sex, and he recorded the incident on a video camera. It wasn't clear how many times Lemon baby-sat for the 2-year-old victim or whether he had a history of baby-sitting other children.

Lemon was charged Aug. 5 with Production, Distribution and Possession of Child Pornography in connection with the incident, which occurred in August 2007 in St. Paul. He was released in August on a $25,000 bond. Lemon faces a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison. A federal judge will determine Lemon’s sentence at a future date.

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This is a case in which Lemon should never have had the opportunity for access to a 2-year-old without supervision. What interests me, personally, with this case is:

What kind of parents would hire an unknown person, with no references, from a service like Craig's List, to take care of their child (of any age) and have the confidence to leave this individual alone in their home with their child? To me it is no different than grabbing a stranger off the street and saying: "Here is my child and the keys to my house. I have somewhere to go. I will return later."

As it turns out, Aaron Lemon is the worst kind of pedophile. He wasn't just a collector of child pornography. He produced it. He starred in it. He distributed it.

Last year (2007) the FBI was investigating an unrelated case involving a man in San Francisco. They found evidence that someone in the Twin Cities may have been exchanging child porn with him. They turned this evidence over to The Minnesota Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force which investigated the matter. It led them to Lemon. They got a search warrant for his Little Canada home and found evidence that "led them to believe he wasn't just a collector of pornography, he was manufacturing it".

They discovered, by checking his e-mail account and IP address, that Lemon had been in contact with the suspect in San Francisco as early as 2006. When authorities came to the apartment, which he shares with his mother, to interviewed him, Lemon admitted to exchanging and possessing child pornography. He was subsequently charged.

Lemon was also charged with distributing child pornography across state lines, according to the original indictment against him. He was forced to hand over a laptop computer and a pocket-sized digital camera when those charges were brought. Police found over 100 pictures of children on the computer, ranging from 6 months to 5 years old.

Because of the large number of images found on his computer, the ICAC task force plans to present the case to the Ramsey County Attorney's Office to consider additional charges against Aaron Lemon. According to the Justice Department:

• 1 in 33 children receives an unwanted sexual solicitation online each year.


• 1 in 4 children experiences unwanted exposure to sexually explicit material on the Internet each year.


• more than 20,000 images of child pornography are posted on the Internet every week.

Recent research by the Federal Bureau of Prisons indicates a strong correlation between possessing or distributing child pornography and committing sexual crimes against children, a news release from the U.S. attorney's office said.

Erin Hammill, owner of Apple Valley-based Above and Beyond Nannies, consults 10 character references, five employer references, state, county and national background checks and a credit check on her potential employees. Individuals searching for a sitter should do something comparable, she said.

"There is no way that you can tell a sex offender. You don't just trust. You don't say, 'Oh, they seem like they're safe and sane,' " Hammill said. "But if you checked four references, you would have a sense of who they're dealing with ... And pull a criminal background check that's as thorough as possible."