A judge sentenced a Wisconsin man on Wednesday to five years in prison for sexually assaulting his younger stepsister and an underage "girlfriend."
The 20-year-old man's history of sexual offenses which came to light in February 2012 when his stepsister ran away from her family's Madison home. A passing motorist noticed her on the streets, barefoot and wearing only light pajamas. Doctors said the 15-year-old girl weighed just 68 pounds.
The girl told investigators that her stepmother and father had kept her in the basement. She said her stepmother beat her and her stepbrother tried to have sex with her when she was just 9 years old, forced her to perform oral sex on him in 2009 and hit her.
The man's attorney, Ronald Benavides, pleaded for leniency, contending that the offenses took place when his client was a teenager who grew up in a home with "socially bizarre norms.
Judge Julie Genovese sentenced the stepmother to five years in prison last summer after the woman pleaded no contest to reckless endangerment and causing mental harm to a child.
The girl's father went through two trials and was ultimately convicted of child neglect, child abuse, reckless endangerment and causing mental harm to a child.
The stepbrother pleaded guilty in July to repeated sexual assault of a child in the case involving his former 14-year-old girlfriend. A jury found him guilty this month of first- and second-degree sexual assault of a child and child abuse in his stepsister's case.
"As you can see, my step-brother ... was very rotten to me," the girl, who is now in foster care, wrote in a letter to Genovese this week. "I do not want to see (him) ever again."
— The Associated Press
