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The daycare employee accused of sending thousands of child sex abuse images to her romantic partner, former state Rep. Stacie Marie Laughton (D-Nashua), is getting a mental health evaluation.

Lindsay Groves, 39, of Hudson, was arrested in June 2023 and charged with federal crimes for allegedly taking sexually explicit photos of the children under her supervision in the Tyngsborough daycare where she worked. Groves allegedly sent those images to Laughton as part of their disturbing sex life. 

According to court records, U.S. District Court Judge Donald Cabell last week ordered Groves to be removed from her current jail cell by U.S. Marshalls and brought to a facility where she will undergo a mental health evaluation to determine if she is able to even stand trial.

“I find there is reasonable cause to believe that [Groves] may presently be suffering from a mental disease or defect rendering her mentally incompetent within the meaning of [the law],” Cabell wrote.

Groves has been arguing for months she is not mentally competent to stand trial, according to court records, though many of those records are sealed. Cabell’s Aug. 9 order does not give details as to why he finds it reasonable she might be mentally ill.

Both Groves and Laughton are being held without bail pending a trial in the United States District Court in Boston. The last known location the two were being held pretrial was the Valley Street Jail in Manchester. Representatives with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Boston declined to confirm their present location. At this point, Laughton has not tried to raise the issue of competency.

Prosecutors are under court order to get Groves to an appropriate faculty so the evaluation can be done within the next month by a psychiatrist or psychologist. Then, whoever examines Groves must present a report to Cabell detailing her mental health history, any current diagnosis, and an expert opinion on if Groves is competent to stand trial.

The pair were arrested separately last summer after Laughton started showing other people the images Groves was sending, according to court records. Soon after, Nashua Police began investigating the couple.

Laughton and Groves have a long-standing, volatile relationship. In 2022, Laughton was charged with harassing Groves and her family, which cost Laughton a seat in the state legislature. Laughton was arrested in November of that year for stalking Groves shortly after winning reelection to the House. Laughton was jailed for weeks until the House Democratic Caucus finally forced a resignation.

During the investigation of the stalking case, it was revealed that Laughton had called the police to report Groves was abusing children at the daycare. The accusation was dismissed as part of the ongoing harassment at that time.

According to the federal case documents, Laughton and Groves were reconciled after the stalking case was resolved without a jail sentence. Groves started sending the disturbing photos to Laughton, and the two had explicit conversations via text about the images and their own sexual desires. 

Laughton and Grove discussed raping the children at the daycare facility. In one chilling exchange, they strategized about how to get away with the horrific crime. Laughton maintained there was nothing wrong with sexually abusing children:

GROVES: “You mentioned how I said I was afraid that the kids will run to the parents if we do it with them I wasn’t being serious.”

LAUGHTON: “OK because like I get concerned about that cause I don’t wanna get caught if we do.”

GROVES: “I was joking anyway and you took me serious.”

LAUGHTON: “Oh I know but I just don’t wanna get in trouble. I mean I want to do what we want to do because we like it and we approve of it but others think this is wrong. Lots of parents don’t like people touching their kids and it is against the law …”

In another exchange, Laughton appears to admit having raped a child with Groves

“I was asking because I know we’ve had some back-and-forth, and I know we initially said we do nothing with kids ever again, and you said you were afraid that if we had kids if they would go back and tell the parents the same with the kids you work with,” Laughton texted to Groves.

Laughton, born Barry Laughton, is a biological male who identifies as female. Laughton became New Hampshire’s first transgender elected official in 2012, and the first transgender elected official to be forced to resign.

Laughton was forced out weeks after the 2012 election after it was learned he was still on probation on a felony theft charge. Laughton has also been charged with stalking and making bomb threats. None of that prevented New Hampshire state Democratic Party chair Ray Buckley from praising Laughton as part of “the backbone of the Granite State” in 2022.

Laughton was married for many years to Lisa Laughton, the alleged co-conspirator in a 2008 fraud case that resulted in the felony conviction that temporarily derailed Laughton’s political career. Laughton has also conducted a long-term sexual relationship with Groves. Both Groves and Lisa Laughton are biological women. 

And, Hillsborough County officials confirm, Laughton is being housed with the jail’s male population.

If John Carter had been involuntary committed after he overdosed on opioids, then he might still be alive. That’s what some members of his family said when they spoke in favor of a bill that would add opioid addiction to the state’s mental illness definition in order to expand the involuntary commitment criteria for admission to mental health institutions.

John, better known as Bubba, started his drug addiction at the young age of 13 years old by smoking marijuana. By 16 years old, he went to his first drug rehabilitation center. He went more than three times during a three-year period, unable to beat his addiction. At 18 years old, he started to use intravenous drugs, and two weeks before his fatal overdose, his family went to the police to get him committed. The police said their hands were tied and couldn’t do anything, his father Jack Carter told a Senate committee on Tuesday.

“We don’t have time to wait,” he said. “There’s no reason for more families to bury their kids. These are our children. Something has to get done. President [Donald] Trump called New Hampshire ground zero for the opioid crisis. It’s time to step up and do something for these families, for us, for the kids of our future.”

Senate Majority Leader Jeb Bradley introduced Senate Bill 220 in the the Senate Health and Human Services Committee. If enacted, it would expand the state’s mental illness definition to include those listed in the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders,” which is published by the American Psychiatric Association and includes substance abuse and addiction as a mental disorder. The bill would also expand the involuntary commitment criteria for the state’s mental health services system.

In order to be committed, the bill states, “The person has ingested opioid substances such that the person’s behavior demonstrates that he or she lacks the capacity to care for his or her own welfare and that there is a likelihood of death, serious bodily injury or serious debilitation if admission is not ordered.”

Bradley said he understands that some people might oppose his bill on the grounds that treatment only works if the person is willing to seek it and that hospitals currently don’t have the space or funds to handle involuntary commitment.

“I know there are a couple of issues,” he said. “We are clearly a ‘live free or die’ state and we believe in individual responsibility,” he said. “But responsibility falls on [everyone] who sees someone who is addicted to substances, which is an illness, and needs help. And sometimes people don’t want to seek help and then it becomes our responsibility to help those people. We ought to be able to have this tool to help people who are reluctant to seek out help. I don’t think there is any disagreement about that even in our live free or die state.”

Bradley expects the bill to be retained and worked on over the following months to discuss what the new law would cost the state and improve the language to better define what the process to be uncommitted would entail. Yet, it has bipartisan support with Democratic and Republican cosponsors.

From 2014 to 2015, New Hampshire saw a 31 percent increase in deaths from drug overdose, which is the second highest in the nation, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of New Hampshire estimates 470 deaths will be attributed to drug overdoses in 2016, but the number officially stands at 385, as 85 cases are still being investigated. The chief medical examiner predicts more than 450 people will die from an overdose in 2017.

As of 2011, 38 states had some form of an involuntary substance abuse treatment law that are separate from any kind of criminal issues, according to the Partnership for Drug-Free Kids.

From the other people who testified, the overall sentiment was general support for trying to combat the opioid crisis, but they also sought more information on the specifics of the bill.

“This is a very complex issue,” said Alexander de Nesnera, interim chief medical officer at New Hampshire Hospital. “When individuals go through detox, they are usually on many medications and it could complicate the medical detox process if they’re not monitored very carefully. When you look at developing a system for individuals to be involuntary hospitalized, we need to make sure the receiving facility is linked to a hospital directly, so they can receive treatment if there are severe complications of detox that occur.”

De Nesera also cautioned lawmakers on the possible consequences of the bill.

“By changing the definition of mental illness, you would greatly expand the number of people. Currently, there are 44 patients that are waiting admission to New Hampshire Hospital,” he said.”If we were to expand the definition of mental illness, the numbers in the queue would expand greatly. We only have 168 beds, and with that limited capacity, patients are in waiting rooms to get treatment. That’s not the answer.”

He encouraged legislators to think about investing in more outpatient programs and to have a conversation with the hospitals in the state about what would work for them.

New Hampshire is poised to receive some federal assistance from the 21st Century Cures Act, but not nearly as much as lawmakers expected. When President Barack Obama signed the act into law last year, New Hampshire officials anticipated getting $10 million over the next biennium. It turned out the state is only getting $6 million. State officials thought the money would be distributed based on per-capita overdose deaths, but that’s not what happened. New Hampshire has the second highest overdose deaths per capita in the country, yet California, who has a per-capita rate that is nearly two-thirds lower than New Hampshire, will receive the most money.

“I think our members of Congress across the country have started to recognize that the heroin epidemic is a serious problem and needs more resources,” Bradley said. “I’m surprised to see the way it’s been allocated in New Hampshire. Hopefully, that can be rectified. That being said, we also have to continue what we’ve been doing in the last budget and allocate more of our resources.”

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