2 Men Charged With Raping 9-Month-Old Girl, Filming Assault

Two men accused of raping a nine-month-old girl and filming the attack were indicted in Tennessee on Tuesday. They were charged with aggravated rape of a child and sexual exploitation of a minor.

A Shelby County District Attorney General’s office release said the incident came to light in October 2016 when the victim's mother found the cell phone video of the attack. She identified Isiah Dequan Hayes, 19, through Facebook after watching the video and turned the information over to the police.

Police said while Hayes was seen in the video, Daireus Jumare Ice, 22, filmed it.

Police identified Hayes and arrested him in February, while Ice was also arrested a few days later. Hayes admitted to committing the crime, Fox News reported. His family reacted with horror at the allegations after his arrest.

"To hear this is heartbreaking and scary. Us as a family, we apologize. I know that the child may not remember, but it's something a mother is going to have to hold on to forever. Like, knowing that your child was exposed to something like that. You trusted your child with someone, and you have to deal with seeing this on your own," his brother said, CBS-affiliated television station WREG reported, adding Hayes needed help and wasn’t mentally stable.

"He wasn’t mentally stable during that point in time. Like, I know his mind state. He was probably coerced for money, drugs and anything. He was being young and growing up in the hood, as they say," he said.

In the video, Hayes could allegedly be seen exposing himself and touching the child with his body, The child was nude from the waist down.

Len Edwards, with the Commission on Missing and Exploited Children said, "Well the first thing to understand here is the motivation is not always about sex. It's about money, and it’s a $20 billion a year industry.”

"When you look at the facts, there are 1.5 million images of child pornography in this country. And last year, 10,000 of the children were actually identified, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. I mean that’s a tiny, tiny sample,” he added.

The case was handled by Assistant District Attorney Lessie Rainey of the Shelby County DA’s Special Victims Unit. The men were being held in the Shelby County jail with bail set at $10,000.

In a similar incident in February this year, a man from Magnolia, Arkansas, was sentenced to four consecutive life sentences for raping a 3-month-old and filming it. He was arrested in 2016 after authorities found child pornography on his laptop and learned that some of the images were homemade, ABC 13 reported. The photos and videos were compared to family photos and it was discovered the victim was his relative. He was found guilty of first degree felony aggravated sexual assault of a child.