A circuit judge last week sentenced an illegal immigrant to 26 life sentences for sexually abusing a young girl over a period of about two years.
Sixto Lopez Laines, a Mexico native, was convicted by a jury on Sept. 19 of a pattern of offenses that included rape, forcible sodomy and object sexual penetration of his stepdaughter, who was 9 when the abuse began.
Heather Howard, the assistant commonwealth’s attorney who led the prosecution, hailed the sentence handed down by Judge C. Randall Lowe as a sign that convicted child molesters will be “aggressively prosecuted.”
The defendant’s DNA was found in the victim – a rare and crucial piece of evidence for prosecutors in child molestation cases, as DNA “does not preserve well in the human body,” Howard said.
Lopez Laines came to the United States illegally at age 17, Howard said, and married the victim’s mother, whom he met at a laundromat. He habitually abused the girl when her mother left the house, Howard said. Prosecutors mapped out a pattern of abuses, alleging one offense per month after the initial incident – 26 in all.
“We feel confident that it happened more than we actually alleged,” Howard said.
Although Lopez Laines had no legal status in the U.S., Howard did not pursue deportation proceedings.
“We wanted to make sure he was never able to have contact with any child ever again, whether here, Mexico, or anywhere else,” she said. “The border is just so porous,” she added. “There is no way to ensure that he would never be back here.”
Lopez Laines’ defense attorney, B.L. Conway, did not respond to a request for comment Monday.
Efforts to reach the victim’s family – which recently moved and does not have a phone – were unsuccessful.
