Pa. baby sitter gets 25 years in child porn case

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A home day-care provider was sentenced today to 25 years in prison for letting a sexual predator abuse and film children in her care.

Concetta Jackson, 47, of Collingdale is the third and final person sentenced in what a federal judge called a “sociopathic” child-pornography case.

John Jackey Worman, 42, of Colwyn sexually abused victims from infants to teens and captured more than 1 million pornographic images, prosecutors said. The unemployed Worman, who lived with a girlfriend’s children in a squalid basement apartment, was sentenced to a life term in August.

Co-defendant Dorothy Prawdzik, 45, of Drexel Hill, who took part in some of the sex acts and went to trial last year with Worman, is serving a 30-year term for manufacturing child pornography.

Defense lawyers say the women feared Worman.

Jackson pleaded guilty to a single child-pornography count, prompting Assistant Federal Defender Mark Wilson to argue for the minimum 15-year sentence.

He described Jackson as low-functioning and said she was “blindly indifferent” to the abuse but did not procure children for Worman, as prosecutors allege.

“There is no direct evidence that Concetta Jackson knew that Mr. Worman was going to sexually abuse any infant or minor or even that he was going to produce lascivious photographs or videos,” Wilson wrote in his sentencing memo.

However, prosecutors say Jackson turned over children as young as six weeks old knowing Worman would abuse them and let him live in her home with her four children.

Jackson, who was divorced, feared Worman would work to have her children removed from her care if she refused his demands, Wilson said.