Former Democrat New Hampshire lawmaker Rep. Stacie Laughton, born Barry Charles Laughton Jr., 39, was arrested on four felony counts of distribution of child sexual abuse images on Thursday.
Laughton, a self-identified transgender woman, was arrested just days after his former romantic partner, 38-year-old Lindsay Groves, a former child daycare employee, was arrested and arraigned on federal counts of sexual exploitation of children and distribution of child pornography.
As the Boston Herald reported:
The Nashua Police, which also disseminated a press release on Groves’ arrest, announced Laughton’s arrest late Thursday evening. While police indicated to local media that the two cases are related, the details were sparse. The affidavit filed in Grove’s case alleges that she at least texted to an unidentified “Person 1” four images — four also being the number of counts against Laughton — of nude children, both boys and girls, who she worked with at the daycare center. The details suggest that Laughton is “Person 1” in the federal affidavit, but no law enforcement source has confirmed this.
Federal prosecutors allegedly recovered over 2,500 texts between Groves and Laughton, which included messages about, and the transfer of, explicit photos Groves took of children while working at Creative Minds Daycare in Tyngsborough, Massachusetts.
Sergeant John Cinelli of the Nashua Police Department said the investigation began Tuesday when officers “spoke with reporting parties that indicated Laughton distributed sexually explicit images of children.”
“Detectives from the special investigations division were assigned to further the investigation. They applied for and were granted a warrant for Laughton’s arrest,” Cinelli added.
This week’s arrest is the latest in a string of arrests dating back over a decade for Laughton. Laughton was first elected to the New Hampshire legislature in 2012, making him one of the first openly transgender individuals to be elected to public office in the country.
However, he was unable to serve his term in office when it was revealed he was still on probation after serving a four-month stint in prison on felony identity and credit card fraud charges in 2008.
In 2015, he was arrested for making a bomb threat against the Southern New Hampshire Medical Center, an act he later blamed on “mental illness.”
“I have had a mental illness my whole life, and I guess this was my worst break with it. I was untreated for a long time, and I didn’t have medication,” Laughton said at the time. “I wasn’t trying to hurt anyone, and it was totally out of character for me. I have put a lot behind me, and I never thought I would do this in a million years.”
Six years later, in July 2021, Laughton was arrested and charged with abusing the local 911 emergency system.
“Between May and July 2021, he sent seven texts to Nashua 911, prompting police officers to respond to his address. On each occasion, they determined there was no emergency,” Reduxx reported. “At the time, Laughton denied sending the texts and claimed that he was being ‘spoofed’ by an unknown perpetrator.”
Despite his lengthy criminal past, Laughton was reelected to the New Hampshire legislature in 2022. However, he never served a day of his second term, as he resigned 15 days after the election once his arrest for allegedly stalking a woman in the months leading up to the election became public.
Laughton is being held by Nashua Police and had an arraignment at a New Hampshire court on Friday.
Jordan Dixon-Hamilton is a reporter for Breitbart News. Write to him at jdixonhamilton@breitbart.com or follow him on Twitter.
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