An assistant U.S. attorney said the child rape case was the most heinous she'd seen in 30 years of federal service.
A father has been sentenced to life in prison for selling his three daughters to a child pornographer, who repeatedly raped them and photographed the attacks.
The 63-year-old Tennessee man was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Greeneville Monday. His 41-year-old wife was sentenced in February to 18 years in federal prison after helping prosecutors build a case against her husband and pleading guilty to producing child pornography, The Associated Press reported.
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InsideEdition.com is not naming the parents to protect the privacy of the girls, who were 12, 14 and 16 at the time of the abuse, authorities said.
The couple was indicted in 2013 on charges of production of child pornography, production of child pornography by a parent, coercion, enticement of a minor and the selling of a child by parents.
A fourth daughter, age 5 at the time, was a victim of neglect, but was not sold along with her sisters, prosecutors said.
The three older girls were abused for nearly two years, beginning in February 2011, authorities said.
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During that time, prosecutors said, the children were raped as many as 60 times and some 400 images were made of the sexual abuse.
The case was filed in federal court because the pornography was distributed across state lines.
The girls were placed in state custody after the indictments were issued.
"Words cannot adequately describe the seriousness of the offense," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Helen Smith, who called the case the most horrific she has seen in 30 years on the job.
Prosecutors said the father deserved a life sentence because of his "complete unwillingness to accept responsibility for his conduct... and his history of neglect and abuse of his children."
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