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Man Sentenced For Sexually Assaulting 8-Year-Old Girl

DENVER (CBS4) - The family of a young girl kidnapped and sexually assaulted now knows the punishment for the man who did it.

Bret Thompson will spend from 24 years to life in prison for the abduction in Denver two years ago.

For the mother of the 8-year-old victim it was a tear-filled court appearance. She said the day her daughter was kidnapped from a street near their home was the worst day of her life. An hour and a half after taken the child was dropped off at a gas station after being sexually assaulted.

Thompson, 28, was later arrested in New Jersey. His foster mother, Syvia Luckett, says he had a horrific childhood.

"He was in a very bad place. He was very depressed. He wanted to talk to someone, he said. He wanted to relate to a child who he thought would understand him," Luckett said.

During the trial the little girl testified saying she was scared and that Thompson pinky promised he wouldn't hurt her.

"The victim, when she testified in this trial, was extremely brave, she was a remarkably strong young woman in the face of something more frightening than any of us couldn't imagine," Lynn Kimbrough with the Denver District Attorney's Office said.

Thompson lured the girl into helping put a box in a dumpster. But when he let her go she had unexpected words.

"When she told them she gave him God's blessings that he teared up and was so ashamed and cried about it," Luckett said.

Thompson pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity but the jury didn't buy it.

The judge said said he's been on the bench more than 20 years and hadn't seen a case like it.

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