Alabama’s state police hired Christopher Bauer even after he was kicked out of the FBI amid earlier claims he raped a co-worker at knifepoint.
An Associated Press investigation showed Bauer, 45, moved from one law enforcement job to another with the help of a forged letter making it appear he was “eligible for rehire.”
The forgery prompted an FBI investigation but federal authorities held off charging Bauer as the state proceedings played out.
A jury convicted Bauer in June of first-degree sodomy and sexual abuse of a child under 12 following a weeklong trial in which defense attorneys claimed the girl made up the allegations.
Shackled and wearing an orange jail uniform, Bauer told Montgomery Circuit Judge Jimmy Pool that he never imagined he would end up on the prisoner side of a jail cell. He said juries don’t always get it right.
“It seems no matter what I say, no one wants to believe I’m innocent,” he told the judge. “All it took was an accusation to strip me of everything.”
The girl’s mother stood with prosecutors, who asked for the maximum sentence. Daryl D. Bailey, the Montgomery County district attorney, called Bauer a “sexual predator” following his conviction, saying he needed to be “removed from our streets forever.”
“He’s a monster,” the girl’s mother told the judge. Bauer, she added, used the badge to project the “image of a good person.”
“He had everyone fooled,” she said.
Pool told Bauer as he pronounced the life sentence that he “believed every single word” of the victim’s testimony.
