A former U.S. Marine captain who was convicted of traveling to Cambodia to have sex with children was sentenced by a U.S. court Monday to 210 years in federal prison.
Michael Pepe, 68, a former Oxnard resident, was sentenced in Los Angeles federal court in a retrial on new charges after his previous conviction and life sentence were overturned on appeal in 2018.
At his retrial last year, eight women testified that Pepe sexually abused them when they were as young as 9 years old and some said they were drugged, tied up, beaten and raped, the U.S. attorney’s office said in a statement.
“What he did to those pre-teen girls … was torture,” the judge said.
Pepe was living and teaching English in Cambodia when he was arrested in 2006. He had been in federal custody since 2007.
Pepe was convicted in August of two counts each of travel with the intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct and crossing state lines with the intent to engage in sexual acts with a person under the age of 12.