ATLANTA – A judge sentenced a man to life in prison for raping his own daughter in a cemetery.
The man, whose name is being withheld to protect the identity of the victim, was convicted of the March 10, 2006, incident on Friday. Just days after his daughter's 16th birthday, the man took her to a graveyard and told her to lie down.
"You're know you're old enough to date boys now," he told her. "I'm about to break you in."
He took out a condom and raped her, and he later brought her back to the cemetery and sodomized her, Fulton County prosecutor Kimberly Esmond Adams said.
The jury did not convict him on the sodomy charge. With prior convictions for drug and weapon charges, the man was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, plus 20 years, for rape and incest.
During the sentence hearing Friday, the daughter sobbed as she spoke to her father for the first time in a year: "I got so depressed that I wanted to kill myself. How could someone I trust to protect me and I knew all my life do something as evil and dirty as this?"
Superior Court Judge Jerry Baxter told the man he has no sympathy for him.
"You did this to your daughter twice once in the graveyard and then again in the courtroom," Baxter said.
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