Woman pleads guilty to distributing altered pornographic photos of daughter's friend

SALT LAKE CITY — A woman who circulated digitally altered photos of a 13-year-old girl's face on a nude woman's body at a Salt Lake middle school pleaded guilty Tuesday to sexual exploitation charges.

Danette Stark, 37, admitted to three counts of sexual exploitation of a minor, a second-degree felony, in 3rd District Court. In exchange for her guilty plea, prosecutors dropped 15 counts of the same charge. She is scheduled to be sentenced Sept. 13. Each count carries up to 15 years in prison.

A teary Stark, handcuffed and dressed in a blue Salt Lake County Jail jumpsuit, acknowledged she superimposed her daughter's friend's photo on a woman engaged in a sex act and distributed copies at Northwest Middle School in May. Prosecutors called the images that depicted bestiality "very graphic" and "very realistic." At the bottom of the flier were several derogatory words directed at the girl.

The girl's mother, who identified herself only as Rebecca, cried as Stark made the admission in court. Outside the courtroom she said she still doesn't understand why her daughter's best friend's mother would do such a thing. Rebecca said she discovered late-night "adult" chats on Facebook between Stark and her daughter and asked Stark to stop.

"I just got a sick feeling," Rebecca said. "I told her that was inappropriate, and she was upset." She said she had only met Stark three times prior to that confrontation, which led to arguments, angry text messages and obscene gestures between the two.

Rebecca said her daughter, who was not in the courtroom, will be moving on to high school this year and wants to put the incident behind her.

"She's my hero," she said. "She's determined to just go on with her life."

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