Warren Yerger: 690-Year Prison Sentence For ‘Horrific’ Sex Abuse — And His Wife Helped Him

Warren Yerger, a 52-year-old Pennsylvania man, was slammed with one of the longest prison sentences on record last week — an overwhelming 690 years behind bars. The only reason he did not receive a life sentence, the judge said, was that state law in Pennsylvania did not allow life in prison for any of the hundreds of charges of sickening child sex abuse charges against him.

But what was even more horrifying about the crimes Yerger committed against four children over an astonishing period of 23 years was that his wife helped him do it — and so did a former girlfriend. Both Leslie Yerger, 35, (pictured above) and Deborah Keeley, 48, entered guilty pleas to their roles in the sexual — and well as emotional and physical — abuse of the kids which started when the children were as young as 3-years-old.

The four victims — three girls and a boy — have not been publicly identified, but are now all adults in their 20s with families of their own. The case came to light in 2012 when two of the now-grown victims came forward to Pennsylvania state police.

Whether the victims were Yerger’s own biological children also has not been revealed, but Yerger, his wife, and girlfriend were “were responsible for the care, protection, and support” of the kids — who he beat, starved, and emotionally tormented in addition to the sexual abuse that began in 1989, prosecutors said.

Often, the children were deprived of food for so long they were forced to scavenge through garbage just to get something to eat, prosecutors said.

There were so many charges against Yerger that when his verdict was read at his conviction in December, it took a full 15 minutes to get through all of the counts.

According to prosecutors, Yerger would abuse and torture the kids on a daily basis, often under the guise of “nightly prayers,” when he would lock himself in a bedroom with the girls and claim they were praying, when in fact he was forcing them into sexual acts.

He made the claim of “praying” to the mother of two of the girls, though her identity has not been specified either.

Yerger accused the young boy of “evil” and once broke the child’s nose with a kick in the face, as he “beat the evil out of him,” according to prosecutors.

Police said that when the male victim was five, Yerger forced him to engage in sexual intercourse with one of the female victims, then age 3.

When two of the female victims were in their “tween” years, Yerger not only forced them to perform oral sex on him, but also to touch his wife, Leslie, in a sexual way, the girls told state police.

Leslie Yerger testified in the trial of her husband, confirming the victims’ accounts. Warren Yerger, who worked as a security guard, continued to deny the charges in his own testimony, claiming the victims were waging a personal vendetta against him.

The sentencing came just three months after a Michigan couple were sentenced to life in prison for raping a 1-year-old baby and making a digital recording of their horrific crime.

“There is no charge that exists for it,” Chester County District Attorney Tom Hogan said of Warren Yerger. “But he ought to be charged with murdering the childhood of these victims.”

[Images: Police Handouts]