A California judge sentenced an illegal alien on Tuesday to 401 years to life in prison for his role in carrying out multiple sex crimes.
Macario Cerda, 39, received the sentence after a jury found him guilty in December of several sex crimes— including three counts of forcible rape, seven counts of lewd acts upon a child under 14 years old, one count of kidnapping to commit rape, and one count of criminal threats.
Cerda— who had been in a relationship with the victim’s mother— allegedly raped his victim in 2013 after he forced her into his van and drove her to a remote area.
The victim hopped into the driver’s seat of the van and drove the vehicle away when Cerda was not looking. Tulare County Sheriff’s deputies eventually caught up with Cerda and arrested him.
Officials who investigated the 2013 rape found that Cerda had previously raped the victim in 2010, when she was still a minor, authorities said. The rape resulted in a pregnancy, and later the birth of a child.
The victim’s younger sister also told authorities that Cerda raped her and abused her in 2009, adding that she had been a minor at the time of the incident.
When the younger sister gave her impact statement in court, she described the crimes Cerda had committed against her and family and forgave him for his actions.
Cerda had also asked the judge to “never grant him any possibility at being deported because he has crawled his way back into the States illegally way too many times.”
“Behind the closed doors of this family, the women and girls suffered greatly from the ongoing and horrific violence at the hands of Cerda,” the Tulare County District Attorney’s Office said in a statement.
The 39-year-old illegal alien had been deported from the U.S. before, and illegally re-entered the country five months after his deportation shortly before he committed his crimes.