LACONIA, N.H. (AP) – A judge has reduced a terminally ill child abuser’s sentence so the victim won’t carry misplaced guilt of her attacker dying alone in prison.

At a sentencing hearing Friday, Belknap County Superior Court Judge Larry Smukler reduced Lyndon Farley’s potential 3- to 6-year sentence to one year in prison. With credit for the time he has already served, Farley will be released in a little less than six months.

“The primary person I’m thinking of is your victim,” Smukler told Farley.

The lenient sentence, Smukler said, “allows the victim to be most at peace considering (Farley’s) illness.”

Farley, 34, formerly of Alton, has terminal cancer and has about 17 months to live, according to his lawyer. His family asked that he be allowed to die at home.

The family also noted his release would save taxpayers the high cost of his cancer treatments.

Farley had pleaded guilty to two Class A felony counts of aggravated felonious sexual assault and two Class B counts of felonious sexual assault that occurred last summer.

Farley was diagnosed in May with a form of non-Hodgkins lymphoma, according to public defender Angela Trethaway. Despite two rounds of chemotherapy that cost taxpayers $80,000 to $90,000 each, the disease has spread to Farley’s lymph nodes, his bone marrow and most recently his internal organs.

Smukler said he didn’t consider the illness a mitigating circumstance in sentencing, but did credited him with admitting guilt and not making his victim testify at trial.

Belknap County Attorney Lauren Noether said Farley entered the victim’s bedroom at night while his own daughters were sleeping in the same room. Farley used his stepdaughter’s computer and her screen name to send sexually explicit messages to men. The assaults would follow with Farley telling his stepdaughter that he had caught her having “cybersex” and was showing her what these men were really looking for.

“What he did was a very wicked and ugly thing. She was exposed to the defendant’s lust instead of being protected by him,” Noether said.

Trethaway urged Smukler to consider allowing Farley to transfer his probation to Texas under the terms of an interstate compact and to allow him to be electronically monitored at home.

“He will be on probation for life, no matter how long he survives,” Trethaway said.

Farley had gone to Texas to say goodbye to his family, but turned himself into Texas police when he learned of the charges against him, said Trethaway. She said he also confessed to his crimes and did not fight extradition.

Farley’s sister, Debbie Green of Texas, asked Smukler to let him serve his sentence under house arrest with her and their mother, who also is ill.

“There is nothing I can do to apologize enough. I just want to go home to die with my family so (the victim) doesn’t have to see me again. I’m sorry to everyone involved. It’s ruined everything. It’s cost me everything,” Farley tearfully told the court.

Attorney Teresa Mahoney Mullen, who represented the victim, said victims wrongly believe they are somehow responsible for being sexually abused, and that if Farley was serving a lengthy prison sentence when he dies it would only add to her guilt.

The victim’s mother also asked for leniency.

“He’s so sick, he’s dying. We can’t make him suffer any more than God has already done,” she said, gesturing toward Farley, who was seated in a wheelchair with a thin white cotton blanket covering his gaunt frame. “Lyndon’s going to die very soon. I don’t believe he deserves a life sentence.”