A plea deal filed Friday in Cochise County Superior Court calls for a Sierra Vista man to serve at least 20 years in prison for sexual exploitation of a minor related to possession of child pornography.
Aaron Gabriel DiBuono was indicted by a Cochise County grand jury in July 2020 on 26 felonies, many of which were related to alleged sexual abuse of a young girl in his household starting in 2012. Other charges involve his continued efforts in recent years to entice the girl to have sex and illicit images he took and kept of the same girl.
DiBuono, 34, will be sentenced in December to a prison term of 20 to 34 years for two Class 2 felonies and is expected to be placed on probation for a Class 3 felony of attempted sexual exploitation. All three counts occurred between December 2017 and December 2018 when the female minor was under the age of 15.
The other 23 counts will be dismissed against DiBuono as a condition of the plea deal, including any charges related to sexual abuse. One of the dismissed counts would have mandated a life sentence if DiBuono had been convicted at trial.
Judge Timothy Dickerson will be the one who decides how long DiBuono spends in prison. The judge also has discretion on setting the term of probation DiBuono would serve after his release prison. State law requires DiBuono to register as a sex offender upon his release.
Court records show the girl reported the sexual abuse to the Sierra Vista Police Department in June 2020. She told investigators the abuse started in 2012 and continued for several years, after which DiBuono undertook efforts to get the girl to return to Sierra Vista for the purpose of having sex.
Det. John Andela monitored a SnapChat conversation between the minor and DiBuono before taking on the minor’s identity to continue messaging with DiBuono, who admitted in some of the messages to his past misconduct with the girl.
As the SnapChat conversation continued, DiBuono sent sexually explicit images of himself to the girl. He was taken into custody after arriving to meet the girl at a city park.
Child pornography involving the girl was later found during execution of a search warrant listing DiBuono’s residence and vehicle, including his computers and cellphone. The admissibility of some seized evidence was challenged last year by DiBuono, but Dickerson ruled in May that the search was lawful.
DiBuono’s attorneys filed a petition for special action with the Arizona Court of Appeals in an effort to challenge Dickerson’s ruling. The petition was scheduled to be considered next month, but DiBuono’s attorneys recently withdrew the petition because a plea deal had been negotiated with the Cochise County Attorney’s Office.
Andela previously told Arizona Daily Independent there was no information to suggest DiBuono engaged in any inappropriate contact with other minors.