Texas ‘Babysitter’ Sentenced to 30 years for Taping Child Porn

A south Texas woman will spend 30 years in federal prison for a babysitting scam in which she videotaped the sexual assault of a toddler in her care. The molestation was committed by her boyfriend, a convicted sex offender.

Rosa Linda Ganceres, 54, was sentenced Monday to the maximum term for this offense by a federal judge in Corpus Christi, announced U.S. Attorney Kenneth Magidson. In April, the feds charged Ganceres with the sexual exploitation of a child, also known as the production child pornography.

In June, she pleaded guilty to the crime which took place in 2015. At the time, Ganceres told the court she and boyfriend, Daniel Benson Billman, Jr., who is a registered sex offender, placed an ad on Craigslist in which the two presented themselves as offering babysitting services. Investigators indicated the victim’s mother answered the ad with the understanding that she hired a babysitter to care for her two-year-old daughter but, instead, Billman molested the toddler and Ganceres recorded the sexual assault.

On Monday, the court factored into Ganceres’ sentencing a letter read by the victim’s mother, in which this parent described the traumatic impact the sexual abuse had on the two-year-old, the U.S. Department of Justice stated in a press release.

U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos gave Ganceres 30 years in prison. Upon her release, Ganceres will face 10 years of supervised release. Additionally, the court will impose a number of special conditions intended to protect children from Ganceres. Although what those measures may be were not disclosed by the Justice Department, they will restrict Ganceres’ access to minors and prohibit her use of the Internet. She will also have to register as a sex offender. For now, Ganceres will remain in custody pending transfer to a U.S. Bureau of Prisons facility to be determined in the near future, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of Texas.

Back in January, Billman, 43, pleaded guilty to the same charges. Then, on March 16, Senior U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack sentenced him to 50 years in federal prison.

KRIS reported authorities obtained a search warrant in August of 2015 and raided Billman’s home where they seized a cellular phone. On it, investigators discovered the video with the sexually-explicit abuse Billman perpetrated against the two-year-old girl which Ganceres recorded. Agents also found thousands of child pornography images during the search of Billman’s residence. He had 14 prior criminal convictions. Five of them were for failing to register as a sex offender.

During Billman’s sentencing, the court also heard testimony from a Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agent who explained that authorities discovered other text messages between Billman and a different woman, the mother of an 11-year-old daughter, according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s office. In those communications, Billman requested nude photographs of the child, instructed the woman on how to take the photographs, and told her how to groom the child in order to entice her into having sex with him.

The case against Ganceres was part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the U.S. Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. Led by United States Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who sexually exploit children, and to identify and rescue victims.

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