A repeat-offender child molester has been sentenced to spend every day of a 40-year prison sentence behind bars for repeatedly raping a 6-year-old girl, Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg announced.

“Unfortunately, we live in a time where parents have to be more than just vigilant, they have to be overprotective because monsters like this walk amongst us,” Ogg said. “There is nothing we can do to give this girl her childhood back, but we can do our best to get justice, and that means putting him in prison until he is 80 years old.”

Brian Alexander Washington, 39, was convicted by a Harris County jury of continuous sexual assault of a child for repeatedly molesting a girl beginning when she was 6 and continuing for a year and a half.

After being convicted, Washington asked that a judge determine his punishment, and state District Judge Frank Aguilar handed down a 40-year sentence. Texas law mandates that he serve every day of the sentence behind bars.

Washington, who spent seven years in prison for molesting a 14-year-old girl, admitted on the witness stand that he also had impregnated a 12-year-old girl who had to have an abortion.

After he was released from prison as a registered sex offender, he ingratiated himself with a Houston family without telling them about his past. He apparently stayed overnight at the home often, and that is when he raped the child.

When the girl’s mother found out what Washington did, she attacked him with a knife.

The Houston Police Department investigated the case.

Assistant District Attorney James McKenney, who is assigned to the DA’s Crimes Against Children Division, prosecuted the case with Division Chief Denise Nichols.

“The defendant took an interest in the victim and was able to insert himself into this family by acting like a father figure, helping with chores and giving parenting advice,” McKenney said. “As a registered sex offender, he shouldn’t have been anywhere near that house, but this guy is a predator who thought his actions would not have any consequences. He was wrong.”