The co-founder of the Sundance Film Festival has been sentenced to at least six years in jail after he pleaded guilty to sexually abusing a child.
Sterling Van Wagenen, 72, was sentenced in American Fork, Utah on Tuesday for inappropriately touching a young Utah girl on two occasions between 2013 and 2015 when she was between seven and nine years old.
He pleaded guilty earlier this year to two child sex abuse charges in two courtrooms involving the same victim.
Prosecutors say the abuse first took place at his home in Woodland Hills, Utah. And the second occasion took place as she sat on his lap on a stairway to her family's basement in Salt Lake County.
In the guilty plea deal prosecutors agreed to seek the sentence of at least six years and up to life in prison to run concurrently, according to the
Deseret News.
he victim, whose name is being withheld because she is a victim of sexual abuse, was present as her sister read her statement blasting Van Wagenen for lying and being a coward.
'I strongly believe the only thing you were actually torn up about is the fact that you got caught,' said the girl, now a teen.
'I believe with all my heart that there are others that you damaged,' she added.
Van Wagenen declined to apologize when he spoke to the victim and her family.
'It's clear that any kind of apology I can make is meaningless at this point,' Van Wagenen said. 'So I am not even going to attempt one. I want you all to know I feel the consequences of what I've done. I feel them deeply.'
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