Mom Jailed for Making 10-Year-Old Daughter Pose Nude for Skype Scam

Shine's Worst Parent of the Week award goes to the 41-year-old mom from Attleboro, Massachusetts who forced her 10-year-old daughter to pose naked for a stranger to win $20,000 in a sham bikini contest.

The Attleboro Sun Chronicle reports that the mother (who wasn't named in order to protect the identity of her daughter) was sentenced to serving three months of a maximum two and a half year sentence after pleading guilty to a reduced charge of misdemeanor assault and battery. The alleged perv, 30-year-old Joshua Dunfee of Oxford Junction, Iowa, faces 15-30 years in prison if convicted. A number of sexually explicit photos of female minors were found on his confiscated computer.

The sorry tale began back in September of 2011 when Dunfee met the mother-in-question on Facebook. (Hello? Privacy Settings….) Promising an all-expenses paid trip to Florida and a bikini-modeling job for her and the daughter, he convinced her to disrobe herself and the kid in front of a webcam so he could check out their body types over Skype.

According to the Daily Mail, the creepy scheme screeched to a halt when the woman's twin sister overheard her niece crying and complaining and she contacted the police. The family didn't expect the mom herself to be arrested. Mom told the Sun, "There are sickos out there, and they let them go. But I get locked up. I'm a victim."

A detail of this story bears repeating: the mother is 41-years-old. The frontal cortex of the brain (the area which controls reason) is finished developing by about 24, so that means she had at least 16 years to internalize the adage, "Don't put anything on the Internet that you wouldn't post on the supermarket bulletin board." Especially naked pictures of your child. What's really sad is that now the little girl is without a mom, just when she most needs one most.

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