A Kanawha County judge handed down the maximum prison sentence Tuesday to a man who admitted to the sexual assault and abuse of two young girls.
Douglas Richard Eddy, 41, of Malden, could spend up to 60 years in prison for sexually abusing a 5-year-old girl in 2015 and sexually assaulting a girl under age 12 more than 20 years ago.
Circuit Judge Joanna Tabit sentenced Eddy to spend between 5 and 25 years in prison for the first-degree sexual abuse charge and 15 to 35 years for first-degree sexual assault. Tabit ordered the sentences for the charges to be served consecutively, one after the other.
Tabit also ordered that Eddy must register as a sex offender for 50 years.
The 5-year-old girl, who is the daughter of Eddy's former coworker, described an incident of abuse that occurred in December 2015 to her mother, who alerted police. It was during that investigation that Kanawha Sheriff's deputies discovered other minor females with sexual assault claims against Eddy.
The deal Eddy made with prosecutors in March dropped other charges of assault and abuse made against him. He previously faced charges of "use of minors in filming sexually explicit conduct and distribution and exhibition of materials depicting minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct," according to an indictment returned against him last year.