Manalapan Woman Sentenced to 30-Year Prison Term for Child Pornography, Sexual Assault

A Manalapan woman was sentenced to 30 years in prison for sexually abusing a 5-year-old girl and streaming the assault over the internet, New Jersey U.S. District Attorney Paul J. Fishman and Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division announced Tuesday.

Jennifer Mahoney, 33, pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Mary L. Cooper to sexual exploitation of a child and Cooper imposed Mahoney’s sentence in Trenton Federal Court.

Mahoney admitted to sexually assaulting the 5-year-old girl and steaming the assault via Skype, which is a video-chatting service. On another occasion, Mahoney admitted to abusing the girl in a bathtub, video recording the abuse on her iPhone, and then later emailing the video to at least one other person over the internet. She also admitted to watching other child sexual abuse that was streamed live to her via Skype.

A and a computer was seized from a Texas man’s home by law enforcement previously; three videos of Mahoney engaging in sexual content with the 5-year-old girl were recovered from the Texas computer, according to court documents.

The video chat session via Skype made up two of the videos from the Texas computer. In this video, Mahoney is seen laughing and talking to someone, seemingly the party on the other end of the video chat. The third video exhibits Mahoney sexually abusing the child in the bathtub.

These videos are approximately four minutes in length and show Mahoney performing oral sex on the child while she appears to be asleep, lying on her stomach with her buttocks exposed. Mahoney is wearing a lace top which exposes her breasts and is kneeling at the foot of the bed while she is performing the sexual assault. Mahoney masturbates at one point during the assault, according to the FBI.

In addition to the 30-year-prison term, Cooper sentenced Mahoney to lifetime supervised released with restricted contact with minors and computer-us monitoring. Mahoney must also register as a convicted sex offender.

“No prison sentence can repair the damage Jennifer Mahoney has done, but today’s sentence is appropriate punishment for such heinous crimes, committed against a defenseless victim," Breuer said.

Fishman credits the FBI Cyber Crimes Task Force, under the direction of Special Agent in Charge Michael B. Ward of Newark, and the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office, under the direction of Acting Prosecutor Christopher Gramiccioni, with the investigation which has lead to Mahoney's sentencing.

"Not only did Mahoney totally betray that trust by subjecting her to multiple sexual assaults, but that little girl’s nightmare will be available for others to watch over and over,” Fishman said.