A York woman is being charged with possession of child pornography, a felony charge, after she shared a video of a man sexually assaulting a toddler girl on her facebook account.
Police say 26-year old Tabitha Munoz-Martinez, of the 500 block of West Clarke Avenue, re-posted a video of an older man performing sexual acts on a 2-4 year old girl on her facebook account. She claims she saw the video on her facebook account’s news feed. She told police she downloaded it and then shared the video on her own page in March to make other parents aware of perverts.
Officer Michael Mendez, who investigated the case, didn’t see the video himself but another officer did. “He said it was so disgusting he could only see about two minutes of the six-minute tape.” He said Martinez claims she was just trying to inform the public. “She wanted to educate the general public. Obviously it’s never a good position to feel it’s your need to educate the general public and break the law yourself. Never did I have somebody say that they were going to help the general public by breaking a law by putting child pornography on their web page.” He says she should have called police right away instead of taking matters into her own hands. “She just stated that she realized she made a mistake and she should have called the police but she did not. She opted to re-post it on the internet.”
Although they don’t want to be identified one of Martinez’s facebook friends tipped off police. “I was on facebook and I played the video and I thought, no this is not right. I waited for my husband to get out of the shower and he is the one who decided to call 911 because it is child pornography. That’s just downright sick. There’s other ways. Posting something about pervs and child molesters instead of putting that on there with a young little baby girl. I mean you may not see the guy that was doing it but you seen the baby girl and that was just nasty,” said the tipster.
During an interview with police, Martinez said she saw the video post on her facebook posted from someone else. According to court documents Martinez could not find the source when asked by police.
Martinez is free on $5,000 bail. If she is convicted of possession of child pornography she could face probation or jail time. She would also have to register as a sex offender under the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA) for 15 years.