A West Virginia man convicted of filming an infant being sexually abused will likely spend life in prison.
Kanawha Circuit Judge Tera Salango sentenced Richard Smith II, 41, on Wednesday to serve between 205 and 775 years behind bars.
Smith was convicted last month of 11 counts of first-degree sexual abuse, four counts of sexual assault and five counts of sexual abuse by a parent, guardian, custodian or person in position of trust.
Debra Rusnak, an assistant Kanawha County prosecutor, spoke on behalf of the family and gave a blistering statement in which she called Smith a monster.
“I stand here today, and I think of only one word and that word is monster,” Rusnak said. “It’s ironic because parents go throughout their children’s lives teaching them that monsters don’t exist. And, no, monsters may not be hiding under the bed or in the closet, but make no mistake about it, monsters do exist and Richard Smith is nothing short of a monster.”
Rusnak said the things he did to the child “are things that nightmares are made of. I know that myself, my co-counsel, the court, the investigating officers and the jury will never forget the things that we watched and the things that we heard throughout the course of this trial.”
After handing down the sentence, Salango told Smith the videos he made that jurors had to watch “brought grown men to tears,” the Charleston Gazette-Mail reported.
“I think that you are one of the most evil persons who I’ve ever encountered,“I’ve worked in law enforcement and I have been a judge for a while. You are certainly the epitome of evil. I’m going to make sure you never do this to any other child for the rest of your life.” Salango said.
Smith declined to speak before being sentenced.
Smith and his ex-girlfriend, Roseanna Thompson, were arrested in May 2018 and accused of recording Thompson’s granddaughter being abused three years prior, state police said at the time. The arrests came after troopers were tipped off that Smith had child pornography at his home, news outlets reported.
Thompson is scheduled to stand trial in April.