BIRMINGHAM—A federal judge Wednesday sentenced a Florence couple to hundreds of years in prison for exploiting and sexually abusing a minor child in their custody to produce images of child pornography, federal officials said.
U.S. District Judge L. Scott Coogler sentenced Patricia Allana Ayers, 34, to 1,590 years in prison and her husband, Matthew David Ayers, 42, to 750 years in prison.
Federal prosecutors had asked for these sentences, the maximum possible allowed by law.
“I have been on the bench since 1998, and this is the worst case I have personally dealt with, including murders,” Judge Coogler told the defendants. “You robbed this child of her childhood and her soul, and a maximum sentence is the only sentence appropriate.”
The couple pleaded guilty in June to multiple charges related to 53 pornographic images of the child produced between the summer of 2010 and January 2013, when the child was six to nine years old, officials said.
The images included photographs of the adults engaged in sex acts with the child. Patricia Ayers pleaded guilty to 53 counts of producing child pornography, and Matthew Ayers pleaded guilty to 25 counts of production.
In their plea agreements, both Ayers acknowledged that they took photographs of the child engaged in lewd and lascivious poses and that they each engaged in sexual acts with the child that the other adult photographed.
Patricia Ayers sent pornographic images of the child by e-mail to a man in Texas and told him in e-mail messages that she would bring the child to Texas so that he could have sexual relations with the child, according to the plea agreements.
Following Wednesday’s hearing, the couple was returned to custody in Lauderdale County where they face state child pornography, rape and sexual abuse charges.
“The crimes the Ayers have admitted to are disturbing, inexcusable and sickening,” said FBI Special Agent in Charge Richard D. Schwein Jr. “The Internet has a depraved and dark side which the Ayers lived in, bringing a child for whom they were responsible with them.”