Stephanie Weir (Shelby County Correctional Facility)
A 33-year-old woman in Tennessee has been arrested and charged with a slew of abhorrent sexual crimes in which she is alleged to have trafficked in child sexual abuse material and engaged in sexual acts with her dog. Stephanie Weir was taken into custody on Tuesday and charged with two counts of sexual exploitation of a minor, one count of aggravated unlawful photographing of a minor, and one count of criminal offense against animals, records reviewed by Law&Crime show.
One of the two sexual exploitation charges is listed as being “especially aggravated sexual exploitation of a minor.” Weir is currently being held in the Shelby County Jail in lieu of $100,000 bond.
The investigation into Weir began several months ago when the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) on May 18 reached out to the Memphis Police Department regarding a person saving “apparent child pornography” in a cloud account online, according to an arrest report from Memphis ABC affiliate WATN-TV. The unlawful digital material was reportedly first discovered on Synchronoss Technologies Inc., Verizon’s cloud platform provider, which then notified NCMEC.
The report went on to state that the flagged data was an image showing a “child in a lascivious pose nude,” per WATN. Detectives obtained a search warrant and were able to trace the account back to Weir and found that she had allegedly saved more child sexual abuse material through the account.
According to a report from Memphis CBS affiliate WREG-TV, police said that other unlawful photos and videos depicted the following: three files of videos depicting adults engaging in unlawful sexual acts with children, five files of photographs depicting children posing nude in a “sexual manner,” and one video file that allegedly showed Weir “having her dog perform a sex act on her.”
MPD officers took Weir into custody and she agreed to be interviewed by detectives and reportedly admitted to engaging in a litany of illegal behavior. She allegedly confessed to using her cellphone to contact groups on social media and search for child sexual abuse material and to storing videos and images of child sexual abuse in her cloud account.
She also allegedly admitted to using her cellphone to photograph a toddler nude, which she sent to another person for “sexual gratification,” WREG reported. Finally, police reportedly said that she admitted to using the phone to film herself and her dog engaging in sex acts.
It was not immediately clear if Weir had retained a defense attorney to represent her in the case. She is currently scheduled to appear in court again on Monday.
The Memphis Police Department did not immediately respond to a message from Law&Crime seeking additional details in the investigation.
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