The owner of a Bronx day care center who was previously charged with two sexual offenses involving an 11-year old minor pleaded guilty to both counts on Thursday.
According to the U.S. District Attorney’s Office, Southern District of New York, Bronx resident Silfredo Castillo Martinez, who operated a day care center out of his Decatur Avenue residence located within the Norwood neighborhood of the borough, pleaded guilty on March 21 to one count of production of child pornography and one count of sexual exploitation of a child.
Martinez operated the licensed facility known as the “Daycare Facility” from the middle of 2015 until at least May of 2022, according to the U.S. District Attorney’s office.
In 2018, Castillo Martinez forced an 11-year old minor who attended the day care facility to engage in what is being described by the U.S. District Attorney’s office as “sexually explicit conduct,” while Castillo Martinez also recorded the sexual acts with the minor on his cell phone and camera.
Around May of 2022, law enforcement agents executed a search warrant at Castillo Martinez’s Norwood residence, where they seized several electronic devices containing several images and a video depicting Castillo Martinez performing sexual acts with the 11-year old victim, along with nearly 10,000 images of child pornography, according to prosecutors.
“(Silfredo) Castillo Martinez exploited the trust place in him as a day care provider by sexually abusing one of the (minor) children under his care and by forcing that child to perform sex acts on him,” said U.S. Attorney Damian Williams. “Martinez’s conduct is reprehensible — and he now faces more than a decade in prison for his crimes.”
Williams, who highlighted the investigative work conducted by the U.S. Secret Service’s Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, the FBI and the NYPD, also thanked the Bronx District Attorney’s office for its assistance in the case.
“The defendant, a day care owner, was supposed to keep children safe,” said Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clarke in a 2022 statement, when Castillo Martinez was initially arraigned and indicted. “Instead, he allegedly sexually assaulted a minor in his care.”
Martinez, 34, is scheduled to be sentenced by U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer on June 25. The sexual exploitation of a child count carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years and a maximum of 30 years in prison.
This case is being handled by the U.S. District Attorney office’s General Crimes Unit, with assistant attorney Jackie Delligatti in charge of the prosecution.
Reach Steven Goodstein at sgoodstein@schnepsmedia.com or (718) 260–8326. For more coverage, follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram @bronxtimes
