A San Antonio woman has been sentenced to a 30-year term in federal prison for crimes involving child sexual abuse material. Ashley Nicole Smith, aged 41, faced charges stemming from her actions that started in November 2019 and persisted until March 2021, wherein she sexually assaulted a minor child, and produced and distributed videos of the abuse, as reported by the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Smith's indictment included a series of sexual assaults on the child, beginning when the infant was only days old in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). These continued until the child reached 18 months. She was arrested on March 4, 2021, and later pleaded guilty to the charges on August 28, 2024, in a plea that led to her sentencing. In addition to prison time, Smith is required to serve 30 years of supervised release after imprisonment, U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia also mandated that Smith should not have any contact with the victim post-release, and she was ordered to pay $50,000 to the AVAA fund. Moreover, the devices used to commit these crimes are to be forfeited, according to a statement by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas.
The investigation of the case was a collaborative effort between the FBI and the San Antonio Police Department. It was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Tracy Thompson and highlighted as part of the Department of Justice's Project Safe Childhood initiative. This nationwide project, launched in May 2006, aims to combat the widespread issue of child exploitation, primarily focusing on offenders who use the internet to carry out their crimes, as obtained by the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
