] Mercado, who brushed back strands of brown hair from her ] reddened eyes as she spoke, has a story that has not ] changed from the start. She told the Richardson police ] officer who responded to the store's call that she had ] always taken pictures of her children nude, and that it ] wasn't uncommon in her native Peru to do so. They were ] innocent baby pictures, taken for the family's benefit, ] she said. ] ] Five days later, when a state child welfare investigator ] and two detectives arrived at her house, Mercado again ] insisted that she saw nothing wrong with the photos. She ] allowed the group to search the couple's cramped room, ] and the detectives went through everything, including ] their photo albums, apparently looking for more evidence ] of child porn. They found nothing. ] ] "We fought so hard to come to this country," says ] Mercado, a 33-year-old who was a nurse in Peru and ] aspires to become licensed in the United States one day. ] "For this to happen is unbelievable." This is crazy. People are so afraid that they're going to miss a child abuse case that they go after everything and anything. Printable page |