For parents, choosing someone to watch your children when they aren’t there can be one of the scariest decisions they’ll make. It’s not hard to see why: in many cases, children are being entrusted to a stranger. For one family, that turned into their worst nightmare.
29 year-old Ashley Dack was charged with sexual performance by a child and super aggravated sexual assault after being caught sexually assaulting children with her boyfriend and photographing it. Dack and Patrick Schuneman are alleged to have molested multiple children, with at least one being as young as 11 months-old.
Dack worked as a babysitter, likely as a means to find potential victims and abuse them. She was caught after she bragged about having sex with children to a friend of hers — and when Dack asked the friend to charge her phone, the friend got copies of explicit text messages sent back and forth between Dack and Schuneman, and sent them to the police. After that, police obtained a search warrant and seized Dack’s iPhone and saw the graphic messages for themselves.
This is an example of one of their conversations:
Dack: Oh honey? I never know. There is a little girl at lunch with blonde pig tails, kept dancing around on the floor. Wanted you 2 to be hiding in my car and I could bring her 2 you. Maybe 4 [years of age].
Schuneman: Would love that. Would you join us or leave us alone?
Dack: Join you. We could use the seat belt to hold her down and wrap around her neck so she couldn’t wiggle because it would get tighter and tighter
Schuneman: She’d be so scared
Dack: But no one could hear her if we were in my car
Schuneman: I would hold her neck and head as you pulled her pants off
“The defendant and co-defendant shared text messages over time that suggest something more sadistic than your typical sexual abuse,” prosecutor Stephen Driver explained.
Police also found images of Schuneman fondling an 11 month-old baby. After police found out who the mother of the child was, they also discovered that Dack had babysat the child the same day the text messages and photos were sent. Both were arrested, with Dack sentenced to 30 years in prison and Schuneman eight.