Skip to content
Link copied to clipboard

NE mom pleads guilty to making child porn

Christine Yoder offered to send her older daughter, 6, to a man in Michigan.

CHRISTINE YODER, a Northeast Philly mom, stood before a federal judge yesterday and admitted taking sexually explicit photos of her two young daughters, and offering the older girl - who was 6 years old - to a man in Michigan.

Yoder, 32, a short woman with straight brown hair, dressed in a forest-green prison shirt and pants, pleaded guilty to two counts each of producing child porn and distributing lewd pictures.

"Are you pleading guilty because you are in fact guilty?" U.S. District Chief Judge Petrese Tucker asked Yoder.

After a pause, Yoder, of Lardner Street near Castor Avenue, Oxford Circle, replied: "Yes."

According to the federal indictment filed last year, from as early as March to May of last year, Yoder persuaded, enticed or coerced her two young girls - about 16 months old and 6 years old - to engage in sexually explicit conduct and took pictures of them with her Motorola cellphone.

On May 21, 2014, Yoder, using the social-networking services MocoSpace.com and Kik Messenger, and the screen names "sexygirl32" and "freakygirl82," began texting with a man in Michigan, who was really a confidential source cooperating with the FBI.

She offered her 6-year-old to the man and sent him a photo of her daughter engaged in sexually explicit conduct, and then offered to fly her daughter to Detroit to have sex with the man.

"She wanted to find her daughter a husband," First Assistant U.S. Attorney Louis Lappen said in court, adding that Yoder hoped the man would get her daughter, who is autistic, "pregnant because she wanted to be a grandmother."

Later, on May 21, 2014, an undercover special agent with the FBI, working in Detroit, took over the confidential source's account on Kik Messenger. Yoder then sent the undercover agent a photo of her 6-year-old with her private part being spread open by an adult hand, according to the indictment. The agent asked if the hand was Yoder's; she said it was.

Over the next two days, Yoder gave the agent information he needed to buy the 6-year-old a plane ticket. She said she was "very serious" about sending her daughter to Michigan.

On May 23, 2014, Yoder sent a message to the agent saying "I don't want any contact after u take her" and another saying "That's my 6 yr old Urs now."

After Yoder's arrest that day, authorities found 40 images of child porn on her phone - 36 of her older daughter, and four of her younger one, Lappen said.

Yoder admitted to the FBI that she had contacted several men and engaged in various chat sessions, Lappen said. "She said she did not intend to send her daughter away," but also said she intended to send her away for the summer and see what happens, the prosecutor told the judge.

Yoder, who is in federal custody, faces a mandatory-minimum sentence of 15 years in prison and up to life imprisonment at her June 10 sentencing hearing.