Billings man accused of secretly recording underage girls in the bathroom of his home

A girl reporting child sex abuse to a school official has led to criminal charges against a Billings man.

Franco Antonio Sidoti pleaded not guilty Thursday in Yellowstone County District Court to multiple counts of child sex abuse and one count of molesting a child, with county prosecutors accusing the 42-year-old of secretly recording underage girls in his home. His arraignment concluded with Standing Master Bradley Kneeland setting his bail at $250,000.

Earlier this year, according to charging documents, a girl reported to a school administrator that she’d found explicit videos on Sidoti’s cell phone showing underage girls. Later that same day, an officer with the Billings Police Department detained Sidoti. In a subsequent meeting with BPD detectives, he agreed to give a statement and consented to police searching his vehicle for his phone.

While police did not find the phone, Sidoti allegedly told detectives he’d installed a camera in his bathroom at home. Sidoti installed the camera, court documents said, in order to catch children smoking. The camera was motion-activated, according to charging documents, and its recordings would be downloaded to Sidoti’s phone.

Detectives received a warrant to search Sidoti’s home and seized several cell phones, thumb drives, memory cards and the bathroom camera. When detectives pulled data from his cell phone, they allegedly found multiple videos of underage girls using his bathroom in various states of undress. The data extraction uncovered thousands of anime drawings depicting child rape, according to charging documents.

“There is in excess of 160,000 images on the defendant’s personal phone,” court documents said. “Some images were anime depictions of children having sex with and some appeared to be AI generated to appear as anime drawings in sexual situations.”

In a forensic interview, according to charging documents the girl who initially reported Sidoti’s abuse graphically described Sidoti molesting her. For each count of child sex abuse, Sidoti faces up to 100 years in prison.

Child sex abuse is the third-most common sexual offence committed by men in Montana, behind rape and sexual assault, according to data from the state Department of Corrections. From 2020 through 2024, over 250 men were sentenced for said crime, nearly 20% of whom were sentenced in Yellowstone County District Court. In the same timeframe, the average prison sentence for those convicted of child sex abuse was just over 23 years.

Last week, a Yellowstone County jury convicted a Ballantine man of raping an 18-year-old woman after plying her with marijuana and alcohol. Robert Thomas Mansfield, 55, is slated to be sentenced for sexual intercourse without consent and unlawful transactions with children.

Along with setting his bail at $250,000, Standing Master Kneeland ordered that Sidoti be monitored by GPS, should he post bond. While outside of custody, Sidoti is barred from being alone with anyone under 18 or visiting places that children frequent.