NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) – A New Haven man convicted of preying on teenage boys over the Internet was sentenced to life in prison Friday in one of the first cases of a the federal law that carries a mandatory life sentence after two convictions of child sexual assault.

Carlos Rivera, 36, is the first person in Connecticut given a mandatory life sentence under the 2003 law. He was the second person in the nation charged under the law.

“Adjectives are inadequate to describe the conduct that was proven beyond a reasonable doubt at the trial,” said U.S. District Judge Mark Kravitz, who sentenced Rivera.

“Words like appalling, horrific, depraved really don’t do justice. It was premeditated, it was preying on our most vulnerable, our youth, and it was just horrendous.”

Rivera’s attorney, Paul F. Thomas, declined to comment afterward, but said he will appeal. He said during the hearing that Rivera was sexually abused when he was 6 and never had mental health treatment. He had suggested a sentence of about 30 years.

During the hearing, Rivera said there was a Bible verse he wanted to read, but he was afraid it would be misconstrued, so he asked the judge to read it to himself.

“Today there is plenty I’d like to say but it would make no difference,” Rivera said.

Kimberly Mertz, Connecticut’s top FBI agent, called the sentence appropriate.

“The crimes were horrific and unfortunately there is no way to give the victims back what he took from them,” she said. “Fortunately, he’ll spend the rest of his life in prison. Unfortunately, there are too many others out there like him.”

Rivera who had been convicted in 1996 of sexually assaulting an 11-year-old relative, was convicted in July of making and possessing child pornography and preying on teenage boys over the Internet.

“Rivera is a dangerous, repeated sexual predator, and only a sentence of life in prison will provide certainty that he will not victimize another minor again,” prosecutors wrote in court papers.

Authorities said Rivera sexually abused numerous minors in 2004 after he befriended them in Internet chat rooms.

A jury deliberated for less than two hours after a two-day trial before convicting Rivera on all counts.

Rivera kept a log of his victims, listing that he had sex with one minor at least 500 times, prosecutors said. He also kept a notebook of “punishments” he intended to impose for the victims’ “disobedience,” threatening to kill one of them, according to court papers.

In 2004, after one of the victims had killed himself, Rivera threatened to stalk and terrorize one boy. After Rivera told the boy he was in the Latin Kings gang, the boy threatened to kill himself, according to court papers.

“I can buy you a gun… It’s faster,” Rivera told the boy in a chat room exchange cited in court papers.

In court papers filed before the hearing, Thomas called the mandatory life sentence “draconian” and questioned whether the convictions met the legal criteria to trigger the mandatory life sentence.

The two-strikes provision was incorporated into a 2003 crime bill that also encouraged states to set up Amber Alert systems to find kidnapped children and impose heightened penalties for traveling overseas for sex with minors.

AP-ES-10-20-06 1816EDT