California children's hospital therapist sentenced for molesting disabled children

A former children's hospital worker who molested five disabled children and took pornographic photos of others was sentenced Wednesday to 45 years and 8 months in prison.

Prosecutors said Wayne Albert Bleyle targeted patients who were comatose, brain damaged or too disabled to speak. Families of the victims described the crimes as their worst nightmares.

"I just want you to know it doesn't matter what you say or how many years you spend in jail _ it's not going to be enough," parent Lillian Godfrey told Bleyle at his sentencing hearing. "I don't think you have a soul. You're just an empty human shell."

Bleyle, 56, told investigators he molested as many as half the children he treated in his 10 years working as a respiratory therapist in the convalescent ward at Rady Children's Hospital.

He stared straight ahead as a succession of weeping family members spoke from the public gallery behind him.

Bleyle was arrested in March 2006 after U.S. agents traced child porn through Internet file-sharing networks to his home computer. They found tens of thousands of pornographic images, including photographs he took of himself abusing his patients.

Under an agreement reached in June, Bleyle pleaded guilty to eight counts of forcible lewd acts involving five children. He also agreed to plead guilty to four counts of exhibiting minors in pornographic materials, far less than the initial 33 pornography counts.

The plea was modified Wednesday, with prosecutors dropping one pornography count and Bleyle pleading guilty to a single count of posing a child for pornographic purposes.

Prosecutors said they made a deal in part to spare one of Bleyle's victims the strain of testifying. The teenage girl said Bleyle inappropriately touched her buttocks while she recovered from a stroke.

Investigators identified four of the five children Bleyle pleaded guilty to abusing: three girls and a boy who were all younger than 14 when the molestations took place. Two of the children have since died.

Investigators never learned the name of the fifth victim, a 2-year-old girl.

Bleyle's attorney, Casey Donovan, spoke on his behalf after the families were finished.

"He wishes to apologize to all the victims and their families," said Donovan, who noted that Bleyle himself had been sexually abused as a boy. "He knows he can never make amends for what he has done."

Judge So also ordered Bleyle to pay restitution _ to be determined at a later date _ to the families of the victims.

Bleyle worked at the well-regarded children's hospital for 25 years. A month after his arrest, a second hospital employee, tracked through online peer-to-peer networks, was charged with molesting a comatose toddler patient.

Christopher Alan Irvin, a 32-year-old nurse at the time, pleaded guilty in September and was sentenced to 14 years in prison.