Content advisory: This article mentions sex abuse, CSAM, and homicide. Please take care while reading.
When Stephan Sterns, 37, was arrested for possessing inappropriate – euphemistically speaking – footage of himself sexually assaulting 13-year-old Madeline Soto, people turned their eyes and raised brows to the mother, Jennifer Lissette Soto.
It’s still not clear where Jennifer was at the time of her daughter’s disappearance. Nor is it clear how much she knew about her daughter’s prolonged abuse at the hands of Sterns and her ultimate tragic demise, just days after her birthday on Feb. 22. However, it came out in May that Jenn was aware of things no mother should be comfortable with.
Most netizens became suspicious of Jennifer when she misspoke during one of her interviews prior to her daughter’s body being found days miles away from their home after Sterns’ arrest. She said, “We took her to school,” which she later rephrased as “my partner took her to school.”
A netizen wrote on a Reddit thread:
One thing is clear, especially after the recently unveiled information, most netizens do not have Maddie’s mother’s back. Many believe Jennifer Soto is guilty of something, if not of Madeline’s murder or direct abuse, then of allowing a sexual predator to prey on her tween daughter not for days, or months, but for years.
Conflicting statements and subsequent silence
With Stephan now charged with murder, the detectives must be well on their way to piece together who knew what, where, and when – some also leaked crime scene photos by accident, but that’s another story. This process entails that they have an eagle eye trained on the mother, who, by all means, made a couple of statements that don’t add up, and some others that are concerning, to say the least.
In an interview, Jennifer said the last time she saw her daughter was Sunday night, Feb. 25. But to the police, she was inconsistent and contradicted herself, alleging she saw Madeline getting dressed for school, a statement which would give Sterns some protection, as he had claimed he’d dropped Madeline near her school, a narrative that attempted to divert attention elsewhere.
Sterns quickly proved himself to be more than unreliable, and, if nothing changes and things run their course, Jennifer is on her way to showing herself as unreliable. She couldn’t have seen Maddie get dressed in the morning, because it is believed that the 13-year-old had been killed earlier than that.
Before 8 am, Stephan Sterns had thrown Maddie’s belongings, including her backpack, in a dumpster. The teenager could indeed be seen in video footage inside the car that morning, but police believe she was already dead. In other words, there is footage that confirms that Sterns drove around with Madeline’s body.
There are enough holes and ambiguities in Jennifer’s story for people to be reasonably suspicious of her involvement. Perhaps worse of all, which intensified the scrutiny, Jenn said to the police, after the sexual abuse was discovered, that she was not only aware that Stephan, her on-and-off boyfriend, would sleep in the same bed as her young daughter but she seemed to be perfectly okay with it. Moreover, it doesn’t help her case in the court of public opinion that she has clammed up after having previously given media interviews left and right.
We still don’t know all the facts. But hopefully, by the end of this tragic story, someone will be brought to justice for not only having killed Maddie, but also terrorizing her in unspeakable ways for years.
If you know someone suffering from sexual violence, contact RAINN or the National Sexual Abuse Telephone Hotline at 1-800-656-4673.
