Grand Junction – Two victims in an Internet child pornography case have been returned to the home where they were filmed performing sex acts. The alleged perpetrator – their grandmother – is in jail on $100,000 bail.
The 3- and 9-year-old girls, one of whom is disabled, were returned along with three older siblings to a Clifton home investigators described in an arrest affidavit as having moldy food and feces strewn about and “in general uninhabitable for young children.” The children lived there with their mother and grandparents.
Investigators also found a computer in a bedroom with a webcam attached that was allegedly used to film the children performing sex acts on grandmother Debbie Slaughenhaupt, 49, while a Canadian man who was viewing the encounters made requests for specific sex acts.
Slaughenhaupt, who went by the screen name of shortstockdeb57, had been chatting on the Internet with “good_guy_matt” – Matthew Hughes, 26, of Toronto – for more than six months before he was arrested in December.
After his arrest, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents worked with Canadian authorities to track down some of the 4,500 American contacts on Hughes’ computer.
That attempt led to Slaughenhaupt. She admitted under voluntary questioning to having her grandchildren touch her while Hughes watched on the webcam. She was arrested on suspicion of 14 charges, including sexual assault of a child by a person in a position of trust, sexual exploitation of children, procurement of a child for sexual exploitation, and child abuse. The latter charge was for the living conditions in the home.
Investigators with the Mesa County Sheriff’s Office removed the five children from the home for interviews. The arrest affidavit said none of the children disclosed any inappropriate touching but the four oldest children said they had viewed pornography on the computer while Slaughenhaupt and their grandfather were in the room.
Norma Maestes, spokeswoman for the Mesa County Sheriff’s Office, said an investigation is continuing, but the children’s grandfather and mother are not suspected of being involved in the alleged sexual abuse of the children.
She said the Mesa County Department of Human Services made the decision to return the children to the home.
Human Services spokeswoman Karen Guillen said she could not comment on why.
Staff writer Nancy Lofholm can be reached at 970-256-1957 or nlofholm@denverpost.com.
