VISTA (CNS) - A North County babysitter who took part in the molestations of four girls she was tasked with caring for pleaded guilty this week to felony sex crime counts and is expected to be sentenced to 100 years to life in state prison later this year.
Brittney Mae Lyon was arrested in 2016 along with her boyfriend, Samuel Cabrera, in connection with the molestations, which took place between 2014 and 2016 on various occasions in the victims' homes, in Lyon's home, and in Cabrera's. Prosecutors said the girls ranged in age from 3 to 7 years old.
Investigators found video recordings of the crimes on hard drives inside Cabrera's car, according to testimony from his trial in 2019. Cabrera was found guilty by a Vista jury of 35 counts and was sentenced in 2021 to eight life-without-parole terms, plus more than 300 years to life in state prison.
Lyon, 31, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to four counts of lewd acts on a child and admitted to allegations that she committed the acts during the course of a kidnapping, a residential burglary, multiple victims, or a combination thereof, according to Deputy District Attorney Jodi Breton. Lyon is scheduled for sentencing in August.
The victims' mothers testified that they hired Lyon to babysit their daughters after finding her on childcare websites. One of those mothers testified that her daughter is on the autism spectrum and was nonverbal at the time of the molestations, when she was 6 and 7 years old.
WATCH: ABC 10 News anchor Melissa Mecija spoke with victims in 2023 as they grew frustrated by the delays in Lyon's trial.
Lyon would babysit the girl at the victim's house during the week. On occasional weekends, however, Lyon would take the girl on her own for excursions she was not paid for and were unrelated to babysitting. Lyon told the mother that these outings would help her with a research paper she was writing as part of her degree, which she claimed was related to child development.
The mother testified she was aware Lyon had a boyfriend, but had never met him and never consented to have him participate in any activities with her daughter.
Another mother testified she hired Lyon to babysit her 3 1/2-old daughter on two occasions. After the second occasion, the girl informed her mother that Lyon had brought her boyfriend over to the house, and that the defendants had changed her underwear, she testified.
Lyon said that she alone had changed the girl's underwear because it was torn, and that her boyfriend had only come over to bring her cold medicine. A subsequent doctor's examination did not reveal anything untoward, but the mother said she later read a news article detailing the couple's arrests and contacted police.
Cabrera and Lyon were initially charged on the basis of two of the victims, but after police publicly disseminated information regarding their arrests, charges were added regarding two other girls.
