LIMA — A 12-year-old girl raped by a man will never have to look over her shoulder and worry about him again.
Daniel Monk, 55, was sentenced in Allen County Common Pleas Court to 48 years in prison Monday on three counts of rape, one count of attempted rape, and two counts of gross sexual imposition.
Monk had little to say other than he knew what he did was wrong.
“I lost it,” Monk said.
Monk’s attorney, Greg Donohue, blamed the death of a woman Monk lived with for 16 years for putting him in an emotional state that led him to rape the 12-year-old girl who was an acquaintance to him.
“That is a very traumatic experience for an individual to have a [woman] he was living with for 16 years die,” Donohue said.
Assistant Allen County Prosecutor Ken Sturgill asked Judge Jeffrey Reed to sentence Monk to the maximum to protect the community. He said Monk groomed the child and advanced to raping her.
“This is not a one-time thing, ‘I made a mistake.’ This happened over and over,” Sturgill said.
A letter from the victim’s mother was read in court saying the crimes would affect her daughter for the rest of her daughter’s life.
“There is no, ‘I’m sorry,’ to fix this,” the mother said.
The mother, in the letter, asked the judge for life in prison so her daughter would never have to worry about Monk again or see him.
The crimes took place between Dec. 28 and March 23 at Monk’s home. The crimes were discovered when someone walked in on Monk engaging in one of the crimes against the child.
During his change of plea hearing last month, Monk seemed more worried about what may happen to him in prison than he was with the victim.
“They will kill me in prison,” he said. “The way they do sex offenders. I know what they do to them.”
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